tap, a commercial room with a garden at the back. Corridors roamed around in darkness as if they were looking for something they could not find. I have myself poked all round a house for a missing hat. And a flight of steps led off downward to a kitchen of darkest deviltry.

"A quaint old house," said Bill, as we mounted a broad flight of stairs hung with musty pictures, "not entirely clean perhaps, but better than Robin's Nest. It hasn't been changed since it was a posting inn.”

There was a great joint for dinner, carved on a table at the top of the room by the landlady herself. A dome-like pewter cover hung above suspended on a chain, and between her assaults upon the joint this was lowered to keep her victim hot. In her private life she was of gentle manner, but she plunged a long sharp knife into the roast and turned it with a vicious twist. I thought of my note from London, but she met my eye with a calmness that proclaimed her innocent of purse and bloody throat.

After supper we wandered out to see the town. It is an ancient city on a hill, built in feudal days with a lord for master. At the top is a ruined castle with a moat and a wooded esplanade where I am persuaded we might have seen the field on which Simon de Montfort once fought with Henry III, if we had known just where to look. It was a pretty view across the roofs of the lower town into the shadowed fields beyond.

Narrow streets plunge abruptly from the hill, and a legend says that up one of these streets a King of England once ascended in a coach and four-the steepest

street ever to be climbed in this fashion by royalty. There was once a priory of St. Pancras, who is not necessarily a railroad station as Londoners suppose, and the still-existing kitchen walls are scraped by the Brighton train which is not content to steer around the hill but plunges through a tunnel beneath the town. An express came out of this black hole as we stood watching, drawing after it a cloud of smoke as if hell were down the line.

Having walked for an hour, for our diversion we went to Twinks.

Twinks is a theater, or perhaps I had better say that it is a last asylum for village talent and for broken actors rejected by more worthy stages. The entrance is by way of a candy shop on one of the steep lanes that plunge off from the high street. It is a narrow dirty hall and excels only in the density of its bad air. As we entered we heard a great roar of applause at a silly jest. The plot, if there was one, consisted of persons popping in and out of doors, and stumbling over mats. And for dialogue "Now, George, tinkle the ivories!"

It is said that Jack Palmer, who was a friend of Charles Lamb, once operated a theater here at Lewes; but the town has fallen to Twinks. First and last upon our travels we patronized a half dozen theaters— vaudeville, pictures and drama-and if we in America are ashamed of our own low average, let it be our comfort that lack of taste is as common in southern England.

Having now watched an actor with a pimpled face stumble on a rug four times to increasing merriment,

we rose abruptly, filled with septic germs, and left the hall to breathe deeply of the wholesome evening air.

Lewes had drawn its shutters for the night, and shadows lay thick upon the streets. And, if daylight

JULIA FLUAY

She stood at supper with dripping knife

lives with us to keep our present fashion, it is in these hours of darkness that old habits return to ghostly residence. Lewes was again a medieval city. A guard paced upon the castle battlements. A watchman with a lantern cried the time. Crumbled towers grew per

fect. And far below on the darkened fields Simon de Montfort walked before his tent to plan assault at dawn.

We entered the White Hart. The bar was shut. The hall was dark. The row of chamber bells hung silent at the office wicket. Then one of them moved slightly on its wire. Was it the wind from the open door? Or was this faintest tinkle a lingering echo of the past— a message caught in returning broadcast from horsedrawn days when coaches, mired on the London road, came belated into Lewes and clamored from their bed that a nightcap be fetched upstairs. Perhaps Tom Jones had quartered here, and this was his call for rum that stalked across the years to seek utterance in this shadowed hall.

But as we climbed the musty staircase to our rooms I thought again of my note from London, and in my fancy I saw our landlady as she stood at supper with dripping knife. We set our bolts, looked beneath our beds and fell asleep.

And this, dear reader, is how we escaped murder in a country inn.

Their mother had pooled her offspring at a bargain counter

CHAPTER XIX

SAFE AGAIN IN TRIVIAL MATTER

"ELL," said Bill, "this is Saturday. On Monday George comes."

W

For it had been arranged when we left London that on this day we were to telegraph a friend in the city to join our trip for a week or so. We looked at a map for a town where he could meet us Monday morning. It had been our intention to strike west from Lewes across the South Downs to Pyecombe and lay over there for the Sunday when trippers are the thickest and the going bad. But we could not find what trains would stop from London and so we changed our route to Brighton.

This was a concession to necessity as we knew it to be a tawdry place like Hastings, crammed with tourists on a dirty beach, and we preferred the quieter town among the hills. From Lewes to the west, also, there was a mesh of paths on windy meadows, sheep trails