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As I approached the little village, the gleam of white sheets mingled with the picture of old houses huddled together, some half-timber, some with turrets and encorbelments, nearly all of them with very high-pitched roofs and small dormer windows. The procession was soon to start.

On the top of the hill was a village, in the midst of which stood a little old Gothic church with a gable-belfry, and hard by was a half-timber house, its porch aglow with climbing petunias. Beyond this village was a deep valley, the sides of which were covered with chestnut-trees.

Heaven knows I was never an untidy man. But the feeling that I had when, whilst poor Florence was taking her morning bath, I stood upon the carefully swept steps of the Englischer Hof, looking at the carefully arranged trees in tubs upon the carefully arranged gravel whilst carefully arranged people walked past in carefully calculated gaiety, at the carefully calculated hour, the tall trees of the public gardens, going up to the right; the reddish stone of the baths or were they white half-timber châlets?

Here, the combined churches could afford a splendid club-house, maybe a stucco and half-timber building with gargoyles and all sorts of pleasing decorations on it, which, it seems to me, would be lots better to impress the ordinary class of people than just a plain old-fashioned colonial house, such as you describe.

I could not see that any of the folk on those lands, whether free or thrall, seemed other than glad that Owen was their lord now. It was said that Tregoz was little loved. We left a new steward in the great half-stone and half-timber house, with house-carles enough to see that none harmed either him or the place, and so came back to Norton.

For the English plaster or half-timber house the architect will doubtless design a special mantel, in scale and in harmony with the dark paneling and other architectural woodwork, probably with a paneled over-mantel if the cost is not too rigorously held down.

Part of the house is built of stone and part half-timber, but a coat of thin plaster covers the stonework and makes it conform with the rest. To plaster over stone-work is a somewhat daring act, and is not architecturally correct, but the appearance of the house is altogether pleasing.

The foundations and the chimneys were built of brick. The house contained a large entrance-hall, a kitchen, a splendidly carved staircase, a living-room, and two good bedrooms, on the upper floor. The whole house was a fine specimen of East Anglian half-timber work.

It was also during this century that the best and most interesting of the French half-timber work was done, and although we have no data at hand for determining the matter, we judge that the two examples here illustrated date from about this time.

But such announcements had little terror for us by this time, and we found no difficulty in gaining admittance to the quaint little building. It is in the Elizabethan style, with half-timber frame and sagging tile roof. The windows have small, diamond-shaped panes of leaded glass set in rude iron frames and open on a typical English flower garden.