About a mile beyond the town, on the summit of a hill, stood Hatton
Hall, and John felt a hurrying sense of home as soon as he caught a
glimpse of its early sixteenth-century towers and chimneys. The road to
it was all uphill, but it was flagged with immense blocks of stone and
shaded by great elm-trees; at the summit a high, old-fashioned iron gate
admitted him into a delightful garden. And in this sweet place there
stood one of the most ancient and picturesque homes of England.

It is here to be noticed that in the early centuries of the English
nation the homes of the nobles distinctly represented local feeling and
physical conditions. In the North they generally stood on hillsides
apart where the winds rattled the boughs of the surrounding pines or
elms and the murmur of a river could be heard from below. The hill and
the trees, the wind and the river, were their usual background, with the
garden and park and the great plantations of trees belting the estate
around; the house itself standing on the highest land within the circle.

Such was the location and adjuncts of the ancient home of the Hattons,
and John Hatton looked up at the old face of it with a conscious love
and pride. The house was built of dark millstone grit in large blocks,
many of them now green and mossy. The roof was of sandstone in thin
slabs, and in its angles grass had taken root. In front there was a
tower and tall gables, with balls and pinnacles. The principal entrance
was a doorway with a Tudor arch, and a large porch resting on stone
pillars. Within this porch there were seats and a table, pots of
flowers, and a silver Jacobean bell. And all round the house were gables
and doorways and windows, showing carvings and inscriptions wherever the
ivy had not hid them.

The door stood wide open and in the porch his mother was sitting. She