Tracks in the Snow by Godfrey R. Benson — Read

I am now driven to attempt the task, which I had hoped to escape, of a topographical description. To begin with what is of least importance for the present. The village of Long Wilton lies in the valley of a little stream, and two roads run Northwards from the village along the opposite sides of the valley. The road along the Western side leads up a steep hill to the church, built at some distance from the village for the benefit of the former owners of the manor house. Just beyond the church lies a house which was the manor house, but has now lost its identity in improvements and extensions and become a new and not very beautiful hotel. This hotel owes its origin to the Southwestern Counties Development Company, Limited, which discovered in its neighbourhood promising golf links, whose promise may be fulfilled when the extension of the railway is completed. I ought to but do not thank the Company for a liberal contribution made for the reseating of the church in the days of my predecessor. The hotel spoils the view from Grenvile Combe, across the valley. Its upper windows command a prospect of the whole of Peters' grounds. This, however, does not concern us yet.

The road on the other side of the valley leads to some outlying hamlets which form part of the parish. On the right hand of it, as you go Northwards, the ground rises steeply towards a wide tract of moorland. About a quarter of a mile out of the village a grass lane diverges from the road and leads in a Northwesterly direction. Grenvile Combe is a little property of some ten acres lying between the grass lane and the road, and bordered on the North by a fir plantation which extends from the road to the lane. The cottage, or lodge, which was then Trethewy's, stands close to the Southern corner of the grounds, where the grass lane turns off; and the gate of the drive is close by. The stables, which Peters had not used of late, stand on a detached piece of the property across the road. The house itself is near the fir plantation. The back of it looks out upon a steeply rising pasture field which lies along the grass lane. The front looks (across the drive, a strip of lawn and the road) to the stream and to the church and that ugly hotel on the little hill beyond. Peters' study was in the front of the house at the Northeast corner of the main block of the building, in other words, it was on your left as you entered at the front door; and his bedroom was just above it. A path leads from the drive under the North wall of the house to the kitchen entrance, and on the left of this path, as one goes towards the kitchen, stands an outbuilding in which is the pump. A shrubbery of berberis and box and laurel, starting near the house, just across the path, skirts round the blind end of the drive, and straggling along under the low brick wall, which separates the drive and front lawn from the fir plantation, ends at a fine old yew tree which stands just by the road. All along the front of the house there is a narrow "half area," intended to give so much light and air, as servants were once held to deserve, to the now disused dungeons where the dinners of former owners had been cooked.