Men, Women and Guns by H.C. McNeile — Read

You come on it unexpectedly, round a little spur in the side of the / valley, which screens it from view. It stands below you as you first see / it, not a big house, not a little one, but just comfortable. It seems in / keeping with the gardens, the tennis courts, the orchards which lie / around it in a hap-hazard sort of manner, as if they had just grown / there years and years ago and had been too lazy to move ever since. / Peace is the keynote of the whole picture -- the peace and contentment of / sleepy unwoken England.

Down in the valley below, the river, brown and swollen, carries on its / bosom the flotsam and jetsam of its pilgrimage through the country. Now / and then a great branch goes bobbing by, only to come to grief in the / shallows round the corner -- the shallows where the noise of the water on / the rounded stones lulls one to sleep at night, and sounds a ceaseless / reveille each morning. On the other side of the water the woods stretch / down close to the bank, though the upper slopes of the hills are bare, / and bathed in the golden light of the dying winter sun. Slowly the dark / shadow line creeps up -- creeps up to meet the shepherd coming home with / his flock. Faint, but crisp, the barks of his dog, prancing excitedly / round him, strike on one's ears, and then of a sudden -- silence. They / have entered the purple country; they have left the golden land, and the / dog trots soberly at his master's heels. One last peak alone remains, / dipped in flaming yellow, and then that too is touched by the finger of / oncoming night. For a few moments it survives, a flicker of fire on its / rugged tip, and then -- the end; like a grim black sentinel it stands / gloomy and sinister against the evening sky.