copied and treasured. The adjoining schoolhouse, with its mouldering stone, its 1628 inscription, its mullioned windows and ivy-clad gables, is very picturesque. Beside it is an old apple tree with real apples on it, and others in the churchyard grass below. I trod on one without hurting it, so the lads had doubtless tried them before. The rambling rectory with its large garden looks to be all that man could wish for. Around us are the open fields with giant oaks. "The lowing herds wind slowly o'er the lea," the rabbits frisk in the grass, the wild-ducks and water-hens are tame. In the quiet of the autumn evening all things seem steeped in peace and calm decay, when the trippers cease from troubling, and the children

MUCKLESTONE WOOD

T

HE very name of Mucklestone Wood is suggestive of big stones and woods, but it gives no idea of the wondrous vision that from its seven hundred feet of height is spread out as on an open map of scores of miles of this fair realm of England. Here the good soil and all that it enriches brought the earliest primeval man to settle and multiply. All down the long ages he and his stuck to the land, fattened on it, fought for it, died on it, and turned to it again. Aborigine, Briton, Roman, Anglo-Saxon, Norman, all have left their mark, and many a stately home and some forlorn and desolate may still from there be seen. My childhood had been nourished on its healthy air, my youthful dreams were tinged with its romantic memories and with its gorgeous sunsets. X had often heard from me of this delectable land. He had been shown it from afar, but now he was to view

it. a land compared to which the famous Promised Land was but a barren wilderness.

We went by the usual train to Crewe,

and from thence to Audlem, to photograph the many-gabled black and

white house known as Moss Hall.

MOSS HALL

The date that is

now over the door is 1016, but the second figure has probably been a six, and the person who altered it de

served kicking. In the Civil War time a Captain Massy (not Mossy) lived here, and was plundered of sixty cattle with goods and horses all at once. How he would swear! Church and King men to this day are great in oaths, and some of them would not be within adding a few centuries to the date of the house or the long descent of the family. Even if this Massy were a Puritan, and I rather think he was on the side of the Parliament, he might be excused a little strong language at losing

his cattle and having to seek consolation and revenge. from the Old Testament's denunciations of the wicked and the sinner.

Audlem village has a little quaint old church perched up on a steep bit of rock in its midst. Like other open churches it is well kept, has been fairly well restored without being spoilt, and has several interesting bits of architecture, old heads, old oak, and marks in the ancient porch that may have been caused (as the legends say) by the sharpening of arrow heads. There is a disused doorway high up which looks as if any one stept out of it now he would step into empty space. Then there is a butter market at the bottom of the church steps, but there is no butter, no women, and no one about. Every

one scems asleep even at noon. A calm and placid little town where the kittening of a cat would cause some temporary excitement.

We journey on to Buerton Hall, where cousins named Nunnerley refresh us with cream cheese-not the cheese of commerce, but the cream of the cream simply pressed solid in coarse cloth. What food for lords and cyclists! Near to the house is a fox's earth where bones and feathers and fur show how the dear little cubs are fed. From the carcase of a cochin hen it would seem that even the cubs turned up their sharp noses at that old stringy thing and asked their Ma to bring them something tender. In country places we always speak of the fox, not a fox, just as in savage tribes they speak of the bear or the wolf, and in theological circles they speak of the devil. It is a survival of the propitiation of the power of the evil.

From Buerton we go steadily uphill to Woore, where three counties join, with the usual result, a lawless

holds its steeplechase meeting, the district becomes feverishly excited, as in the olden time, everybody entertains everybody else, if not with home-brewed and home-made, with tales and tips. Although I still religiously preserve the old breed of gamecocks known as Lord Derby's, I have never taken any there as my forbears did, but I have been to see a racehorse of my own breeding run.

At Woore we had the unpleasant experience of