cutting off the sound, except in certain winds. We did not miss a
reception, which would rather have embarrassed us. We began to
think it was time to arrive, and my father believed we were climbing
the last hill, when, just as we had passed a remarkably pretty
village and church, Griffith called out to say that we were on our
own ground. He had made his researches with the game keeper while
my father was busy with the solicitor, and could point to our
boundary wall, a little below the top of the hill on the northern
side. He informed us that the place we had passed was Hillside--
Fordyce property,--but this was Earlscombe, our own. It was a great
stony bit of pasture with a few scattered trees, but after the flat
summit was past, the southern side was all beechwood, where a gate
admitted us into a drive cut out in a slant down the otherwise steep
descent, and coming out into an open space. And there we were!

The old house was placed on the widest part of a kind of shelf or
natural terrace, of a sort of amphitheatre shape, with wood on
either hand, but leaving an interval clear in the midst broad enough
for house and gardens, with a gentle green slope behind, and a much
steeper one in front, closed in by the beechwoods. The house stood
as it were sideways, or had been made to do so by later inhabitants.
I know this is very long-winded, but there have been such
alterations that without minute description this narrative will be
unintelligible.

The aspect was northwards so far as the lie of the ground was
concerned, but the house stood across. The main body was of the big
symmetrical Louis XIV. style--or, as it is now the fashion to call
it, Queen Anne--brick, with stone quoins, big sash-windows, and a
great square hall in the midst, with the chief rooms opening into