ABOUT half way between Little Misfit and High Rising the pleasant village of Hatch End, close under the steep downland, straggles along one side of the river Rising, separated from it by the road and the water-meadows. The houses are of grey Barsetshire stone fretted with golden lichen, the cottages of anything from decaying stone, through mellow crumbling brick, to a kind of primitive wattle and daub washed in harmonious faded creams and dirty pinks, with mossy, leaking thatched roofs.