his niblick from the sand and the ball rolled up near the cup.

We entered a wood of ash and beech, and pushed through brier and grass. And now, being tossed about on bypaths, we came upon an avenue of massive trees. It must once have flanked a road, but the footing now was tangled and neglected. One could believe that it led to the house of a sleeping princess in some forgotten valley of the hills.

And then we climbed to a higher point where a meadow opened up a view. Here we heard a motor horn and came shortly to a highway. And now by frequent question in a mesh of crossroads we came at last to Lodsworth. But these hours we spent in Cowdray Park stand as a memory apart in the pleasure of our trip.

We rested for a pint of beer. And from the village grocer we bought for each of us a hunk of cheese, a pocketful of crackers and a jar of minced chicken which we passed about and speared upon a knife. It was thus we lunched as we tramped ahead.

So, with snatches of tragic opera from Bill between bite and bite, we progressed merrily to Lickfold where a tavern called the Three Horses stood against the road. The cheese and crackers being now launched but stranded in the channel we swept them downward with a pint of beer. Beezer's was as usual a ginger beer. A far-off look came into his eyes. He was homesick for an ice cream soda, and it was in this respect alone that he considers that English civilization fails. If nut sundaes could be scattered through these towns they would fill his cup of happiness.

And now a two-wheeled cart was pushed slowly up the road and an itinerant umbrella mender shared our bench. He lifted his pewter mug, he wiped his lips, he

There will be broken umbrellas to mend all the way to Petworth

spoke of England's distress and her millions out of work. Then he uttered in confidential sadness, "There are too many marriages, and too few funerals." But a

sudden gust of rain blew up the road and he brightened at this hint of better business in his own particular line. "If this squall continues," he said, "there will be broken umbrellas to mend all the way to Petworth." "Another beer?" said Bill.

"The same!" replied the tinker.

He left us and pushed his cart up the hill, and the flat tinkle of his bell again cried out his wares.

At Fernhurst we rested. It is a picturesque village of ancient cottages that repose about an open square. A half mile away the highroad runs from London, but it swerves off in a curve of hills and Fernhurst hears no more than a distant horn. This is the charm of England. One needs such a slight detour to escape the char-à-bancs, and if he choose a secondary road he walks in peace among sleepy towns that are nested in the trees.

As we lay on the green at Fernhurst we heard the tolling of the village church bell, and soon men and women in sober Sunday black issued from their doors. It would have been an impertinence to inquire whose funeral it was. I like to think that a person of eighty peaceful years came at last to the turf beneath the yews, that grief was hushed in the thought that here was a life complete. In these English villages where the graveyards lie so familiar to the living, death seems but a slight transition from one cottage to another. The lease of a garden plot runs out, and in solemn ceremonial with neighbors all about, another lease is written that is of longer tenure. A new-cut stone is an added chapter to the village annals—a book that runs

for a thousand years with shifting persons in its endless plot. And when the tolling bell has died away, children swing again laughing on the gate, and their jest and cry are as fitting to the peaceful yard as the echoing hymn or the song of wind and bird.

After Fernhurst we came upon the highroad and in an hour we limped into Haslemere hard on dinner time. This is a town at the center of hotels that perch on the nearby advantage of the hills, but we chose the White Horse in the high street as a sufficient hotel that was near at hand. At the crossroads in front is an ornamental lavatory with a plate "To the Memory of Mrs. Stewart Hodgson." Such a useful memorial must please her practical soul, wherever it may be. There is a town hall on the second story, but the whole building smells vilely of disinfectants and authors of verse express their dirty genius on the walls.

As we entered Haslemere the Salvation Army was hard at work upon the curb to save the town from hell. There was a jangling of tambourines to draw a crowd and a young gentleman with pimpled face launched upon a fiery sermon.

When the tambourine was passed I dropped in a sixpence.

H

head and Blackdown, six hundred feet above

the sea a prodigious boast in England-and it asserts that it is the loftiest town in all the south, although a careless Alp would stub its toe upon these hills. It was a borough in the reign of Elizabeth. Later, James Oglethorpe sat for it in parliament, and he was the man who founded Georgia and named it for the