grey eyes, and at finding pheasants' nests he was a velveteen-coated Argus. In everything connected with hunting he had developed, indeed an instinct that was canine. He told me stories that made me stare, and believe at the same time that he had developed a sense of scent. Many of his former trade he had brought to see the error of their ways. He scattered new earth on paths where trespassers were forbidden, found footprints next morning, examined them casually, and told certain people in the village, within the hour, where they had been walking by moonlight. These, seeing a vision of the county goal before their eyes, no doubt took to the night-school. Upon

different class. He was a skilled labourer of over seventy years of age, but hale and hearty still. This old man had the head of a village Dante, and was one of the noblest types of an illiterate peasantry I have ever chanced on. He had never been out of work in his life, and had been only out of his native village once. Then he had been to London for the day, and had expressed himself-as a road-maker-much disgusted with wooden pavements, and the immodest demands of the drivers of hansom cabs. In rural innocence he had hired the gondola of the metropolis for several hours, and had, when the moment for reckoning came, found himself confronted by an unpleasant surprise,

the question of common rights, however, my friend laid aside all his dog-like instincts. Upon this issue he was all a man; and a man who clearly thought that he was being deprived of his liberties. At the sight of a new inclosure being erected on a neighbouring hill, his eyes darted a sinister fire. He knew the law, he declared, and to me as an outsider, his exposition appeared to be most sound; he both looked and spoke with an earnestness that was quite painful, and I confess I should not have been surprised to have heard that agrarian crime had broken out within fifty miles of London.

Another native of the hamlet, whom I had some conversation with, was a man of a

and an invitation to an adjacent police-court. This brief experience of a wicked world had sufficed. He confessed to me that he was contented with his native place, and showed himself completely devoid of curiosity. He had heard talk of the sea, but was unable to conceive it, and he could neither read nor write. In spite of these drawbacks, however, in an age of progress, the old road-maker confessed to only one trouble. This was, I regret to have to say it, the day of rest. Sunday was my friend's bugbear. As he naïvely expressed it, "it was the only day in the week in which he could find nothing to do," and a sort of pastoral ennui accordingly marked him for its own.

AT THE EDGE OF THE WOOD.

From a Drawing by DAVID CARR.

The majority of his neighbours show small sympathy with his sorrows. On the seventh day they lounge about the hamlet contentedly enough, attend the service held in

the

school

room, and do

a little business

afterwards in neigh

bouring preserves, when

times are seasonable and oppor

tunity invites. The owner of a small holding walks his estate rather ruefully, and sees, as a rule, little in the look of his barren acres to warrant rosy anticipations for settling day. The boys of the hamlet wile away the shining hour by throwing stones at the handle of the schoolhouse door.

But the people I have described are types which are rapidly dying out before the Church's mild reform. Already they follow but feebly in their fathers' footsteps. As

poachers they have lost much of their cunning, and as parishioners they begin to aspire to a competition with their more civilized neighbours. For within three miles of the hamlet we are in Sussex, surrounded by the homely English scenery which Constable loved to paint. Huge trees overhang village smithies where white cart horses are being shod; in front of the smithy stretches the village green, still adorned with the timehonoured may - pole. The village clowns booze on the rustic bench in front of the gable-roofed ale-house. Amidst their laughter the broad Sussex gaping dialect makes itself unmistakably heard, and gives a last touch to a picture of rural prosperity.

But even here we are but on the outskirts of the forest. The heaths which overhang the Sussex village, are the same in colour and character as those which surround the Hampshire hamlet. Though rapidly disappearing they are still the key-note of the country, and, however varied the scenery which lies round them, they are ever the standpoint from which it is most characteristically seen. Try as he will, the traveller of an imaginative turn can never rid himself of their influence.

Within a mile, for instance, from the Sussex village we are in Surrey. But here, too, the heaths stretch far and wide on either side of the sandy road. This rises gradually to a plateau. Behind us lie Sussex and Hampshire. The South Downs bound the picture with an outline of soft undulation.

Through them comes for an instant, as the sun strikes, a gleam of silver sea. At our feet lies a vast prospect of woodland and cornfield. We are looking over one of the granaries of England. But even in sight of this scene of prosperity, a certain suggestiveness, which always seems to cling to the moorland, strikes us as we read on a gravestone set up on a lonely sweep of road, a silent memorial of murder.

This suggestiveness, which especially surrounds the Hampshire hamlet, is-in spite of the recent innovation which I have noticed-still the key-note of the country.

The heather on these moors may burn with the brightest crimson; the gorse, earlier in the year, may blaze with the most gorgeous gold; but even in the pomp of midsummer, when life is most fervent in flower and leaf they seem never freed from a certain strange solemnity; and when autumn has turned the green of fern and bracken to red and brown, when the sun sets luridly among thunder-clouds and dark shadows fall abruptly on slope and hollow, these solitary moorlands, these by ways of nature, rising lonely and solemn from the rich wealds which lie on all sides of them, strike the fanciful traveller with a strange sense of awe and mystery, which has all the fascination in it of a place that is haunted, and in which, it may be, lies the secret of their singular charm.

MACAULAY, as I have already observed, denied that Turpin ever rode to York. But we have got used I hope to this sort of thing. And in an age in which Numa has been deprived of his Egeria, Romulus and Remus of their wolf, Diogenes of his lantern and tub, Æsop of his hump, Rhodes of its Colossus, Dionysius the First of his ear, and Sappho of her leap, such a stricture does not really matter in the least, especially as I purpose to go to York with Turpin-whether he really rode to York or no.

For though I purpose to deal in this chapter chiefly with the York Road's great inns, I think that a ride over the distance will be advisable, if only to give some sort of idea as to how the land lies.

And we have been in coaches and Flying machines so often, that I think that a turn on horseback may be a welcome change.

I find then, on referring to the prophet Ainsworth, that Dick Turpin started for his celebrated ride from the Jack Falstaff at Kilburn-an inn I do not find in my Paterson's Roads. Here, after having regaled a cosmopolitan company with several flash chaunts, generally prefaced by some such remark as "Let me clear my throat first! and now to resume," the gallant Turpin's impromptu oratorio was interrupted by the rapid entrance of those who-"in point of

fact" wanted him. Upon which he got to horse upon his mare Black Bess, shot his friend Tom King by mistake (who observed to a lady opportunely standing by him, "Susan, is it you that I behold"?)—and then rode off to the crest of a neighbouring hill, whence a beautiful view of the country surrounding the metropolis was to be obtained. Here his bosom suddenly throbbed high with rapture; he raised himself in the saddle, and prefacing his declaration with a profanity, said that he would do it. And by "it," he meant his ride to York.

He at once shaped his course for "beautiful, gorsy, sandy Highgate." No doubt he would have admired the scenery more (he was a great admirer of scenery was Turpin, and that is one reason why I am going with him to York) if 66 the chase had not at this moment assumed a character of interest

whatever that may mean. Turpin however saw nothing favourable in the phenomenon, and made over Crackskull Common to Highgate. He avoided the town, struck into a narrow path to the right, and rode leisurely down the hill. His pursuers at this point somewhat aimlessly bawled to him to standseeming to forget in their flurry that he was on horseback. The gallant Dick answered their demands by unhesitatingly charging a gate, and clearing it in gallant style. He

then scudded rapidly past Highgate, "like a swift-sailing schooner with three lumbering Indiamen in her wake." And so through Du Val Lane-(what tender recollections must here have possessed that manly breast) into Hornsey-where the turnpike fellow closed the toll-bar in his face, and the "three lumbering East Indiamen" (the metaphors here become a trifle mixed-but no matter) cried aloud, "The gate is shut! We have him! Ha! Ha!"

But not so! though the old Hornsey tollbar was a high gate, with chevaux de frise in the upper rail! Not so! though the gate

trampled to death under the feet of the three lumbering East Indiamen-that is to say under the feet of Paterson's (chief constable of Westminster's) horse.

"Open the gate, fellow," he (Paterson)cried. But the man said "not at all" unless he

got his dues. He'd been done once already; and he was prepared to be struck stupid if he was done a second time. By which ingenious block, while Paterson was feeling in his pocket for a crown piece, our friend Richard was enabled to take advantage of the delay and breathe his mare-after which he struck into a bye lane at Duckett's Green,

swung into its lock; "and like a tiger in his lair the prompt custodian of the turnpike, ensconced within his doorway, held himself in readiness to spring upon the runaway." Not so! For what did Dick do? He did four things.

1. He coolly calculated the height of the gate.

2. He spoke a few words of encourage

ment to Bess.

3. He stuck spurs into her sides.

4. He cleared the spikes by an inch. The next event which followed in this order, was the narrow escape of the toll-bar keeper, who, tired of crouching like a tiger in his lair, rushed out of it, and was nearly

and cantering easily along came at Tottenham (four and a half miles from London), for the first time in his ride, into the Great North Road.

At Tottenham the whole place was up in arms. The inhabitants shouted, screamed, ran and danced. They also hurled every possible missile at the horse and her rider. And what did Dick do under these sufficiently embarrassing circumstances? Why, he "laughed at the brick-bats that were showered thick as hail and quite as harmlessly around him." After which he proceeded at his best pace to Edmonton (seven miles from London). Here too, as at Tottenham, the ingenuous natives turned out