Crumbs from a Sportsman's Table Author:Charles Clarke Purchase of this book includes free trial access to www.million-books.com where you can read more than a million books for free. This is an OCR edition with typos. Excerpt from book: CHAPTER III. THE RESULTS OF A FEW DAYS' FROST IN THE COUNTRY. The village of Wallingford is long, unsightly, dirty ; a steep hill, the Warnsford Arms, and ... more »the old mossgrown, mouldering park wall on the opposite side of the road, are all that the traveller remembers. Time-honoured wall! Conscious of what it contains, it frowns upon one. At the top of the hill are the iron gates, through which the village urchins peep at the mysteries of the big house. Those village critics are severe, and quiz us daintily as lords-in-waiting. Not a carriage rolled in, not a horseman in scarlet disturbed the echoes of their street, without some testimony of their scrutiny— out of school they had nothing else to do, and they did it. Inside the gates the recollection even of these saturnalia ceased: all was repose. The green and polished lawn, a mossy bed for gnarledand twisted oaks; which like twin giants on either side of the gravelled drive strive to embrace, but scarce successfully. A glimpse of oriel windows and gable ends tells of oaken panels and dark passages within, and grim old warriors, or more lettered statesmen, on canvas not removed since the days of good Queen Bess. How like an old gentleman of the " ancient regime " it looks ! its neighbours are many of them grander, larger, finer, more of this world's modernism about their appearance ; but none so dignified, yet bland and courteous-looking; with one foot in the grave, seeming as if it ever had been so ; its antiquity is not a thing of time, but is part and parcel of itself, born with it in its infancy. It never was younger, we feel assured, and it never can grow older than it is to-day. There are glades around it, too, in its chase or park, which might have suited for a stage for " As you like it": where the lone and melancholy ...« less