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The old half-timbered cottages with overhanging storeys, peaked dormers, and gabled porches, tapestried with roses and honeysuckles, must be much what they were in Bunyan's days.

Lines of pale, lilac cloud shaped like those flights of cranes which decorate the oriental cabinets of the Long Gallery crossed the western sky above the bare balsam poplars, the cluster of ancient half-timbered cottages at the entrance to Sandyfield church lane, and the rise of the gray-brown fallow beyond, where sheep moved, bleating plaintively, within a wattled fold.

The "Bear and the Ragged Staff" is another half-timbered house with a straggling array of buildings and curious swinging signboard, the favourite haunt of the disciples of Izaak Walton, under the overhanging eaves of which the Avon silently flows. The old "Seven Stars" at Manchester is said to be the most ancient in England, claiming a licence 563 years old.

Madame Famette went on grumbling, but Mouton the donkey soon drew her anger on himself; and by the time the three reached the triangle of gray, half-timbered cottages which surround the old church of St. Gertrude, the easy, sieve-like nature of the woman had recovered from its vexation.

Now when I had seen all this I went on into Havant, and there at the cross-roads I found the church of St Faith close by an old sixteenth- century half-timbered house the Old House at Home.

To the fugitive, Ralph Tressilian who appears to have been inveterately partial to the company of rascals of all denominations afforded shelter; and Bagnolo repaid the service by offering to rebuild the decaying half-timbered house of Penarrow.

Garth was not at the office, and Fred rode on to his house, which was a little way outside the town a homely place with an orchard in front of it, a rambling, old-fashioned, half-timbered building, which before the town had spread had been a farm-house, but was now surrounded with the private gardens of the townsmen.

"And that is where I commence my hunt!" Starden Hall was one of those half-timbered houses in the possession of which Kent and Sussex are rich.

Arrived there she went straight to the post-office, a curious little lop-sided half-timbered cottage with a projecting window, wherein, through the dusty close-latticed panes could be spied various strange edibles, such as jars of acidulated drops, toffee, peppermint balls, and barley-sugar likewise one or two stray oranges, some musty-looking cakes, a handful or so of old nuts, and slabs of chocolate protruding from shining wrappers of tin-foil, while a flagrant label of somebody's 'Choice Tea' was suspended over the whole collection, like a flag of triumph.

These pleasant villages of the Aisne, with their one long street, their half-timbered houses and high-roofed granaries with espaliered gable-ends, are all much of one pattern, and one can easily picture what Auve must have been as it looked out, in the blue September weather, above the ripening pears of its gardens to the crops in the valley and the large landscape beyond.