It is a pretty little gabled house, built of gray stone, and stands upon a small rocky eminence--whence its name "the Knoll." There is enough rock to hold the house, and to allow the formation of a terrace about twenty feet wide in front of the windows; then there comes the descent of the face of the rock. At the foot of the rock is the garden. Narrow flights of steps at either end of the terrace lead down to the greensward and the flower-beds; in the centre of these is a gray granite sun-dial, with the characteristic motto around it--"Come Light! Visit me!" To the left is the gardener's cottage, with the cow-house, pig-stye and root-shed. The front of the house looks across the garden, and over the valley to Loughrigg. Its back is turned to the road, and concealed from passers-by, partly by the growth of greenery, and partly by the Methodist Chapel. A winding path leads up from the road to the house, and a small path forking off from this goes round past the cottage to the field where the cows used to graze, and to the piece of land that was appropriated to growing the roots for the cows and the household fruit and vegetables. Within, "The Knoll" is just a nice little residence for a maiden lady, with her small household, and room for an occasional guest. You enter by a covered porch, and find the drawing-room on the right hand of the hall. It is a fairly large room, and remarkably well-lighted; there was a window-tax when she built, but she showed her faith in the growth of political common-sense abrogating so mischievous an impost, by building in anticipation of freedom of light and air from taxation. The drawing-room has two large windows, one of which descends quite to the floor, and is provided with two or three stone steps outside, so that the inmates may readily step forth on to the terrace. This window, by the way, exposed her to another tax than the Government one. Hunters of celebrities were wont, in the tourist season, not merely to walk round her garden and terrace without leave, but even to mount these steps and flatten the tips of their noses against her window. Objectionable as the liability to this friendly attention would be felt by most of us, it was doubly so to Miss Martineau because of her deafness, which precluded her from receiving warning of her admirers' approaches from the crunching of their footsteps on the gravel--so that the first intimation that she would receive of their presence would be to turn her head by chance and find the flattened nose and the peering eyes against the window-pane. There is a special record of one occasion, when her bell rang in an agitated fashion, and the maid, on going, found her mistress much disturbed. "There is a _big_ woman, with a _big_ pattern on her dress, beckoning to me to come to the window--go, and tell her to go away." But similar incidents were manifold, and her servants had to be trained to guard their mistress as if she were the golden apples of the Hesperides.