tenth day—east hendred to wanborough, by lockinge park, wantage, ashbury, and bishopstone

on the following morning early i returned to where i had left my conjectured road, which i shall now call ickleton street, at the crossing half a mile south of east hendred church. the eastern road at the crossing came from the south-east (out of hungerford lane) and was only for a few hundred yards in the line of ickleton street, falling into it a hundred yards or so west of aldfield common, where i had lost the road. the western road was apparently mine, but it was so unimportant for through traffic that though the eastern road forked on entering the northern or hendred road, neither of the forks ran exactly into ickleton street. between these forks was a triangular waste of yellow parsnip, wild carrot, and dock, uneven from digging, and somewhat above the roads which were sunken by downhill wearing.

ickleton street ran for a third of a mile straight westward to a cross-track at the east and west hendred boundary. it was hedgeless as before, and being on a slight depression the horizon was often[285] a very near one of corn, topped by a distant bright cloud or cloud-shaped dark clump of beech. at this cross-track i had to turn a few yards south and then westward along a track of the same kind. not being sunk, or raised, or hedged, or banked, or ditched, the road could be ploughed up easily and its course slightly changed, as here, to serve a barn. this was tames barn, a thatched quadrangle of new ricks and old barns and sheds built of boards now heavily lichened. past the barn it went as before, flat and hard-beaten, with broad ruts, and a slight dip on the right side—a wall not half as deep as the corn was high; there were a few blackthorns on this side. on the left sheep were folded in clover. ahead the lockinge woods showed their tops between the rounds of roundabout hill, which was newly reaped, and goldbury hill, which was part stubble, part aftermath. at the first turning to west hendred, which made the road crook a little to the south—and in this crook—there were two or three rough sarsens, iron-coloured but blotched with orange and dull silver, lying deep in the grass. a little way back i had noticed another on the left, and there was another, i think, east of arfield farm, beside the track.

past the second turning to west hendred (from east ginge) the tiny dip or wall below the right side of the road became a pleasant, high, green wall with blackthorns and elders on it, and the road was a green one, flowery with scabious, and had a bank above it, with barley at the edge. then the little ginge brook and its hollow of elms and ash[286] trees interrupted the road. but a few yards beyond it was clear again where the hard road went at right angles away from it to red barn. it was now above its green bank, and this was eight or ten feet high with blackthorns on it. it curved slightly round the southern base of roundabout hill between the stubble, and being joined by a track from the south it was worn almost grassless. after crossing a track to ardington, it was slightly raised above the fields on both sides. a hard road joined it, and it was hardened itself and had a line of young beeches and elms on each side. this was to lead up to one of the gates of lockinge park, which it entered and disappeared. it must have been bent—probably southward—by the swelling land of the park, but over two centuries of ploughing have left nothing of it visible on the surface.

i turned sharply southward at the edge of this park and presently back to the north-west, past a house of great size with some conservatories, elms, lawns, and water garden—the shadowy and bright grass occupied at that hour by a lap-dog and many swallows. the road, lined on both sides by trees and overhung by valerian and rose-of-sharon, had an unpleasant sense of privacy meant for others.

the turning eastward out of this road by east lockinge post office was in line with ickleton street, but signs of an exit from the park on the opposite side of the road were obliterated by cottages and gardens. this turning i took, and when it curved decidedly to the right a footpath on the left, between a hedge and some allotment gardens, pre[287]served its original line. this path led westward into a road coming south from goddard’s barn. on the right-hand side of the entering of the path into this road lay the good house of west lockinge farm, its barn and sheds and lodges gathered about it on one side of the road, and its ricks and elm trees opposite. the road was half farm-yard and half road and littered with straw and husks, where the fowls were stalking and pecking with a laziness that seemed perfectly suited to a sunday early morning following a blazing harvest saturday.

port way, wantage.

i hoped to find a cart track going west from the other side of this road. for about a quarter of a mile i thought i found it raised a little in the stubble.[288] it had been sown and reaped like the rest of the field, but it was a little weedier and grassier. it was making over the swelling arable for lark hill and the south edge of wantage, but i could not find it in the clover nor in the barley beyond that. i therefore turned north into round hill, a straight piece of hard road going west into wantage, with no hedges but grassy borders between it and the arable on either side. this may be the icknield way or its successor. it led into the main road at the edge of wantage, and this i followed into the town. in the first few yards i noticed the sign of the “lord nelson” on the left. i recognized it as the work of that venerable artist who designs the faces of guys and turnip-men all over the country. i could tell that the man upon the signboard was nelson because the uniform corresponded to the name painted below. the face was as much like nelson as king george iii, and it was entirely different from that on the other side of the board. nevertheless, the effort was to be preferred to a more accurate portrait painted by a builder and decorator’s man from a picture in a history book. it was an effort to represent an image of a hero. the builder and decorator’s man would have aimed simply at reproducing something which impressed him because it was in a printed book: his horses do not represent what he knows or feels about horses, but what he is able to crib from a photographer in a book advertising somebody’s food or embrocation; his “coach and horses” is painful to see, because it ought obviously to be in a book.[289] may it be long before he is allowed to molest the shape of the horse or dragon carved into the turf of white horse hill. in its present shape it could not be used to advertise horse food or embrocation: but the horse above alton priors could be so used and doubtless one day will be.

as i was leaving wantage i heard a blackbird singing in a garden beyond the church. this was near the middle of august and a full month since i had last heard one. the heat had dried up the birds’ songs all much earlier than usual, and now the rain of the last night seemed to be reviving one. the song was perfect and as strange a thing as last year’s snow.

crossing the letcombe brook i was out again between hedges and in the company of telegraph posts on the road to ashbury, bishopstone, and swindon, which is called in the inch ordnance map “roman way.” it seemed the only continuation of ickleton street, and as there was no other road with anything like the same course in the valley i had little doubt that it was the “icleton-way” of the early eighteenth century going “all under the hills between them and childrey, sparsholt and uffington, so under white horse hill, leaving woolston and compton on the right, thence to ashbury and bishopston.” the foot of the downs was about a mile on the left, and between them and the road the cornland dipped considerably. looking over the hedge i saw first a broad land of grass and then a line of telegraph wires making for letcombe and[290] dividing the grass from a broad band of ripe corn; beyond that was a band of very green roots; then a band of newly ploughed earth; then stubble dappled with dark corn stacks, and above them the hill.

under white horse hill.

my road was a narrow one, and at first borderless and worn to some depth below the neighbouring fields. at the top of its ascent out of wantage it had a bank on the right, a fence on the left instead of hedges. after passing ickleton house at a right-hand turning, i reached two cottages on the right at the crossing of a road from faringdon to letcombe. this i entered on the south side to look for a road between mine and the hills. a parish boundary follows this road, and also the lane which i turned into on the right almost at once. the lane was green and ran under some beeches and a natural turf wall south-westward. it was deep worn and rutted as it descended through the corn and barley to a cross-track under another turf wall making from letcombe regis church to childrey. i went on until my track became a hard road to lambourn, and as i had seen no sign of an alternative to the “roman way,” i turned to the right and entered it again at the crossing for childrey and letcombe bassett. elms clustered at the crossing, and the road was deeply worn between grassy banks. it continued to have hardly any green edge, and as it was usually rising or falling it was sunk more or less below its original level; in one place, for example, the left bank was nearly twenty feet high, and i could see nothing but the clouds all sopped[291] in sunlight. the land was almost entirely arable on either side, with standing corn or stooks or stubble. in one place, past the turning on the right to westcott, which is between sparsholt and[292] kingston lisle, the road was on a terrace, having a bank on the left and falling on the right to corn and a thatched farm under trees: there were elms and beeches on either side, but no hedge. the trees of lisle park gave lines of handsome beeches to either side of the road, trees of less than a hundred years, all well-shaped and, in fact, almost uniform, and planted at reasonable intervals. the ridge of the downs was not a mile distant, and from it the grass of a yellowish green colour undulated without a break to the road, sprinkled with beeches and barred with fir plantations. past the blowingstone hill and the turning to kingston lisle these undulations are bare and carved by a steep-walled natural cutting. at this point the top of the downs was only half a mile away, and thenceforward it was never more than a mile until beyond bishopstone. actually the nearest point to the ridge was perhaps where the road twisted sharp to the left to the bottom of a coombe and then sharp back again to get out of it. as the floor of the coombe sloped upwards into the hill, these twists gave a road which was bound to cross it at the lowest possible gradient. the coombe had steep, smooth sides of yellowish grass and a winding flat floor, and through the big scattered thorns and elders of it a track went down to fawler. the road wound again to round a high bank on the left and again to circumvent a thorny hollow on the right, and soon the white horse was coming into view. there were woods steep above on the left; there had been hedges on both sides since blowingstone hill, often bushy and thick and [294] overscrambled by climbers, as, for example, near britchcombe farm. here the road had a green, sunken course divided from the hard one by a thicket. this farm-house and its thatched, white-stone dependencies, their trees, their elders and nettles, stood close to the road, but a little back from it and a little above it, under the almost precipitous ash wood of the hill; and away from it on the other side of the road sloped another coombe of thorns, and also of willows and some water.

dragon hill.

a little past britchcombe farm the dragon hill came in sight above a slope of oats and yellowed grass. then the road twisted again, left and right, to cross another coombe, grown with larch trees on its lower half and having a pool in it near woolstone lodge; but the upper half bending back under the dragon hill, with a few thorns on its steep and furrowed walls. rising up out of the coombe, as usual the road was between steep banks, and on them thorn bushes, scabious, and meadow crane’s-bill flowers.

at the crossing to shrivenham and lambourn i caught sight of the crest and haggard beech clump of barbury above the nearer hills. this crossing was within a quarter of a mile of compton beauchamp, the last of more than half a dozen villages which the road passed by on its right hand without touching. ashbury was the first village traversed by the road since upton. as i approached ashbury through corn that now ran right to the top of the downs, i had a bank above me on the left and one below me on the right, and i could see now both liddington [296] and barbury clumps, and to the left of liddington one high, bare breast of turf. a lesser road turned down to odstone farm, which i was very glad to see again, not a quarter of a mile on my right—its five plain windows in a row, two in the roof, and those below not to be counted because of the garden shrubs. it was a grey, stone house with a steep, grey roof and a chimney stack at either side; there were elms behind it, and tiled and thatched sheds all on its right hand; and the road going straight down to its left side.

green terrace, near ashbury.

the right-hand hedge gave way to show me the elms and thatched barns and ricks of ashbury, its church tower among trees rather apart and nearer the downs. the road descended under a steep left-hand bank, with a green course parallel. it turned right and then left round some elm trees and past a hollow on the right containing a broad millpond enclosed in a parallelogram of elms. at ashbury the road turned to the right away from the church to the “rose and crown,” and the two elm trees standing in mid-street, and then back again to the left into its original line. but parallel with the road a footpath ran from the church on a terrace just wide enough for a waggon. it had a green wall above and below, grass on the left, sweet-smelling lucerne on the right. it rose and fell more than the road as it made for idstone between the barley. the terrace seemed to be continued across the deeply worn road from swinley down; but the path turned to the right and into the main road. this terrace road seemed to be a very possible[297] course for an old, though perhaps only an alternative road.

i stopped for a little time at ashbury, and asking for tea at a cottage and shop combined, i was asked into a silent but formidable sunday assembly of three incompatible and hostile but respectful generations: a severe but cheerful grandmother in black and spectacles with one finger still marking a place in the bible; a preoccupied, morose mother, also in black; a depressed but giddy daughter fresh from the counter of a london shop, and already wondering what she was going to do at ashbury. this girl poured out my tea and told me that there were some very good apples on the tree next door. neither she nor her relatives, because it was sunday, could buy these or in any way procure them, so she told me, though she had begun to want them very much after half a day at her native village; if i went—and there seemed no objection to the damnation of a casual wayfarer—i could probably get some. the old lady who lived in the cottage next door said, as if she were stating a well-known fact in the natural history of ashbury, that she had no apples, that they were very troublesome to knock down, that none had fallen from the trees during the day, and that—she was perfectly certain—there would be none until the morrow. on the morrow i hoped to be many miles from ashbury, and so i wished her a good afternoon in spite of the rigid sabbatarianism of her trees. i returned to the cottage where i had been drinking tea and told the girl that no apples would fall until monday morning,[298] and asked her if she knew any other kind of apple trees in ashbury. perhaps it was as well that she did not, for i found that sunday’s tea cost twice as much as saturday’s or monday’s—it being apparently the right of the righteous to prey upon the damned, even if in so doing they put themselves into a position apparently as graceless as that of the damned. i thought of asking a clergyman if this was so, and seeing a man whom i took to be a clergyman, because his collar was fastened behind instead of in front, i walked after him. but he suddenly stopped and went into the very cottage of the old lady whose apples would not fall before monday morning, and this looked so like a conspiracy that i hastened away, glad to have made these discoveries in the natural history of ashbury.

coombe at bishopstone.

the deeply worn road from swinley down cut across my road, south of the green terrace road, at idstone, and sent it northwards twenty yards or so, just as akeman street cutting across the upper and lower icknield ways near tring sent each nearly a mile northwards. after this i could see no trace of the little terrace road, though it was possibly marked by a bank dividing the next fields to the road from those beyond, and then by a mere division between crops to a point above or beyond bishopstone. half-way between idstone and bishopstone the road entered wiltshire without ceremony. at the turning just before reaching bishopstone the road was worn very deep, and above it a steep-walled, bare coombe ran up into the downs with a track along its edge. more often[299] than not after leaving wantage the road had been worn thus deep, because it traversed a country of numerous and abrupt undulations; these made fairly steep ascents and descents necessary, and they invariably mean the hollowing out of any unmetalled, i.e. of any ancient and not roman road. the plough could never do any harm to this road. but the “port way” between wantage and streatley it could hide from most eyes in a few seasons. the[300] ickleton street between upton and lockinge park would almost disappear under a single ploughing, and doubtless often has done so, to reappear in the same or a parallel course when needed.

at bishopstone the road twisted right and left almost as at ashbury. this was into a coombe with a little stream in it, and there were some signs that the old way had rather been left and right—that is, sloping down to the ascending bottom of the coombe and up again—as in other coombes. but the coombe and the bare downs about it were so shaped by nature, by wearing, and apparently by deliberate but inexplicable cutting, that a mere road could not be traced with certainty. the coombe branched as it rose up into the downs and formed several enormous convexities and concavities of turf. several of their converging slopes were cut evenly into three or four, or nearly a dozen, green terraces like staircases, all of which, had a company of giants sat there, would have given a view of the spring-head below.

sheep were strewn over some of these terraces, making arrangements of white dots of a fascinating irregularity. unless it has become a trick, only a great artist could make similar arrangements of equal beauty. the unknown laws which produce these inevitable accidents are great managers of the beautiful. the succession of bays in an island coast and the general form of the island itself—of course, particularly of islands off our own coast—are beautiful in their way. the shape of england and wales, the shape of ireland, of man, and of the[301] whole flock of the hebrides please me with their unity, fascinate me with their complexity; a mistaken map of any such known place is as bad ?sthetically as geographically. children are fond of inventing islands with marvellous inlets more romantic than anything on the west coast of scotland or scandinavia. but i have never seen one of these invented islands that i could like apart from its creator, or its names, or its sites marked “buried gold,” and so on. they are incredible and raise no wonder. they are not masters’ work. i do not know if geologists can support me, but leonardo’s cave in “the virgin of the rocks” always makes me uneasy by what seems to me to be its artificial impossibility. another great picture which is, i think, faulty in a similar way reminds me of another beauty—the beauty of the scattering and gathering of the stars. i never look at titian’s “bacchus and ariadne” without feeling the constellation in that glorious purple is an unhappy invention. it may be my poor astronomy, but i should be inclined to say that stars never could be spread exactly as they are in that picture. it is not merely that there is (i believe) no such constellation, but that the form is one which, for some reason, they would avoid, though by picking a star here and a star there it might be patched up. birds always fly and fishing-boats always sail in these just patterns. some are so just that, like that of the sheep above bishopstone, i should like to have them copied on paper to look at for their mystical arithmetic.

the village, the mill, and the church were lower down to the right below the spring, on the modern road and its northward branches. only a cottage, with a thatched roof on a level with my feet, lay near the green coombe track above the water. the road went on again between corn and roots, westwards now, and gradually farther from the downs, until a cross-road from bourton cut across it and sent it southwards a quarter-mile by a willowy spring before it turned west again.

this road southward into the marlborough and hungerford road may yet be shown to be part of the icknield way. for at totterdown, a mile and a half beyond, it curves round and makes a line with the road to chisledon under liddington hill—the road much resembling the icknield way which is called “ridgeway” on the maps. it rose now, a hedged and elmy road, to five hundred feet, and had a deep, grassy hollow and elm trees below, between it and the cornland of the downs. it dipped to a spring and a post office at hinton parva; it dipped again and rose to a view over the northern vale to the dim, watery wall of the cotswolds. at this height it crossed ermine street just after passing a “black horse.” all four ways at the crossing were deeply worn and made a pit with bushy banks and tiny green triangles of waste in the midst.

in a quarter-mile past the crossing of ermine street i was at wanborough. there the road forked at the “calley arms.” there is not a scrap of real or pretended documentary evidence for either[303] road, at least until the place-names mentioned in the saxon charter relating to wanborough have been identified. the left-hand road had the advantage of keeping near the hills, instead of going clean away west like the right-hand one. this right-hand road may at last be connected with one of those rumoured roads going westwards, under the secondary line of chalk hills, past holy cross at swindon, past elcombe and studley to st. anne’s-in-the-wood at brislington, in somerset, or to devonshire; and this continuation may at last be shown to be entitled to the name of icknield way. i followed the left-hand road because it seemed possible to connect it with one, very much like the icknield way and in a similar relation to the downs, going south-westward through wroughton and broad hinton, and from there either to avebury or to yatesbury, and so by juggler’s lane to cherhill on its way to bath.

liddington clump, the straight ridge and the “castle” rampart upon it, were clear ahead as i took this turning. wanborough’s towered and spired church stood at the top of a slope of grass on my right. it was a crooked, hedged road, with a grassy edge and a path on the grass; and the telegraph posts followed it. it passed out of wanborough parish at a tiny stream that crossed the road in a deep, narrow cleft with willows and willow herbs below on the right, and in the widening cleft a derelict mill, a steep garden plot, and a row of beehives. it rose up narrow, deep, and steep to the “bell” at liddington. there i turned to the[304] left into the swindon road, and almost at once to the left again, leaving the church on my left. this took me past two or three houses of medbourne, and sharp to the left and right through the hamlet of badbury, where a great elm stands at the first turning above a deep hollow and a road going northward down it to the right. then crossing the roman road from mildenhall to wanborough nythe, i was at chisledon and another cleft in the land. this cleft is often precipitous, and so narrow that you could almost play cards across it. a streamlet and a single line of railway wind along the bottom. the church stands at the edge where it is gentler, and the village is scattered over the slopes and edges.

i was hungry when i knocked at the door of the first inn at half-past five. on the opposite side of the road a small, quiet crowd of drinkers in black coats and hats waited to be let in at six. no one answered my knock. i knocked louder, and still louder, on the woodwork of the door. then i rapped the glass, and rapped louder and many times. but no one came, and as i was too hungry to want justice i went to the next inn. here the door was instantly opened by a little red-faced landlady with fuzzy hair and a gnomish face. she was swift and clean, and so light and quick was her step that every time i heard her approaching i expected a child. she was sorry to say that she had no bed to spare, but told me of someone that might. i tried in vain, then called opposite where “refreshments” were advertised. an enormous woman[305] stood wedged in the doorway; she was black-haired, sullen, and faintly moustached, and she had her hands hanging down because there was no room on either side of her to clasp them, and no room in the doorway for her to rest them upon the fat superincumbent upon her hips. i said good evening, and she remained silent. i asked her if she had a bed to spare. she looked me up and down with a movement of head and eyes, and asked me gradually where i came from. i was so taken aback that i told her like a child, “from east hendred”—which was absurd. she retreated to ask her husband. he appeared alone, and hanging down his head, shook it, and said that he did not think he could spare me a bed. having no gift of speech, i turned very rapidly away from him and back to the inn. the landlady thought of someone else, made inquiries, and assured me that the bed would be ready when mrs. somebody got back from church. so i went out and looked at burderop, ladder hill, and the turning “to the downs and rockley.” the woman was back from church and opened the door to me. she had a background of women taking off sunday hats and putting away veils and prayer-books, and said she was sorry, but a niece had come, and there was no room for me. in the darkening street i saw an old man at a gate with a genial face and the mouth of one accustomed to horses. i asked him if he knew of a bed to spare. “no—oh-oh-oh—no,” he chuckled, with increased geniality. “you’ve come to the wrong place.... oh-ho-ho-ho-ho no,” he continued. “i can’t[306] tell you why; but if you want a bed you have to go to a town.” he was only a visitor to chisledon, and i wished him better treatment than i had got. i set out for swindon. in about a mile i came to another inn, where i had always enjoyed the bread and cheese and ale, and i unwillingly silenced a black-coated company of grave drinkers standing at the bar. they suspended their glasses while the landlord said that it was absolutely impossible to get a bed that side of swindon. i tried at coate. the barmaid appealed to mr. macfaggart, who was standing by—“perhaps mrs. macfaggart can spare a bed?” “no.” this series of refusals was, i am convinced, pure ill-luck. but the stout woman refused me, almost beyond doubt, because i was a stranger whom she could not immediately classify. i could not be classed as a “gentleman,” as a young “gent” or “swell,” or as a plain “young fellow.” she decided not to risk it. perhaps she had savings about the house. or did she think that underneath less than two days’ beard, that oldish and not very clean burberry waterproof, those good but very baggy trousers, murder was lurking? no, probably she felt not the very slightest inclination to please me, and as it only meant half a crown, her one difficulty in refusing was her natural sullenness increased by the presence of the nondescript and unsympathetic casual stranger on a sunday. country people know a country gentleman, a sporting financier, a tradesman, a young townsman (clerk or artisan), a working man, and a real tramp or roadster. some of them know the artist or dis[307]tinguished foreigner, with a foot of hair, broad-brimmed hat, and corduroy or soft tweeds, a cloak and an ostentatious pipe, tasselled, or of enormous bulk, or elaborate form or unusual substance. some know the hairy and hygienic man in sandals. to be elbowed out at nightfall after a day’s walking by an unconscious conspiracy of a whole village was enough to produce either a hate of chisledon or a belief that the devil or a distinguished relative was organizing the opposition. but during those four unexpected miles to swindon in the volcanic heat of evening, which produced several pains and a constant struggle between impatient mind and dull, tired body, i felt chiefly: i suffer; i do not want to suffer; and only now and then the face of mrs. stout, or of mrs. smallbeer, or of the genial old man with the horsy mouth, came into my head, and turned my depression to fury.

possibly they were afraid of german spies at chisledon. not far from maidstone in the summer of 1910 some poor cottage children were telling me how a german spy wanted to rob them of the lunch they were taking to school. he was a dark stranger with a beard, and he was waiting about at a crossing partly overhung by trees; and they were convinced that he wished to steal their food, and that his reason for doing so was his position as german spy.

at swindon i felt what a man feels in a place where he knows one man instead of knowing scores of children and feeling that every passing stranger was of the same family, ready at a touch to be changed to a friend. but i had no difficulty in finding a bed surrounded by the following decorations: pictures of ships in quiet and in roaring seas; of roses twining about the words, “the lord shall be thy everlasting light”; of a cart-horse going through a ford with three children on his back; of an italian boatman and three buxom girls, one clinking glasses with him; advertisements of an aperient and of cheap cigarettes. the advertisement of cigarettes dwarfed all the rest. for not only was the lettering large, but there was also a coloured picture of a swarthy and hearty woman practically naked to the waist. she was smiling with her dark eyes, and her lips were parted. i could not imagine what she had to do with cigarettes of any kind. was there a kind of suggestion that these bold, bad, under-dressed foreign beauties—undoubtedly beauties—were capable of smoking the cigarettes? or was the picture meant to be a stimulus to some, a satisfaction to others, of those who sat at their ease drinking and smoking and thinking of women? in the taproom of the most rustic public houses two or three of these women sometimes adorn the walls, along with a picture of a diseased cow and of its mouth, stomach, and udder. some are dark, some are fair, and, i think, certainly meant to be english; but all are incompletely draped and unashamed. the dark ones are vaunting heathen beauties, the fair tend to be insipid, with expressions borrowed from the pious virgins of religious pictures. some[309]times the bacchante and the pious virgin are to be seen side by side, the sacred one being supplied by the village grocer at christmas. they are equally beautiful, i.e. have regular features, perfect complexions, and expressionless mouths, and are doing nothing in particular except posing so that the artist shall observe their bosoms, or, in the case of sacred pictures, their throats and the whites of their eyes. i do not think it could be shown that these pictures spoil the chances of girls with unclassical features and cross-eyes in the villages. in these matters the moth that desires the star is likely to end in a candle flame, whether or not he mistook it for a star. in these new towns i see women looking as if they were made in the chemists’ shops, which are so numerous and conspicuous in the streets—thin, pallid, dyspeptic, vampirine beauties, having nothing but sex in common with the bold, swarthy alien on the cigarette advertisement....

at swindon the explorer of the icknield way has all the world before him. he may go through marlborough into the pewsey valley, and either along under the hills through lavington to westbury, or, turning out of the pewsey valley, to old sarum, and beyond westbury or sarum into the extreme west; and he will be on a road of the same type as the icknield way for the greater part of the distance. or he may content himself with reaching avebury. or he may miss avebury and aim at bath. at present documents and traditions keep a perfect silence west of wanborough, and among[310] mere possibilities the choice is endless. the easiest, the pleasantest, and the wrongest thing to do is to take to the ridgeway at wanborough and follow it along the supposed south-westerly course under liddington hill, under barbury castle, and then up on to the ridge to avebury. but though it is possible that in the middle ages this was done, there is little doubt that the green way going high up on the ridge past glory ann barn is not coeval with, is not the same road as, the hill-foot road that has crept persistently but humbly under the chilterns and berkshire downs. such a road ran more risks than the ridgeway from the plough. its preservation between upton and lockinge park is miraculous. it might easily have disappeared in the ploughland about chisledon or the rich pastures of coate. let the conjecturer thus skip a few miles in his westerly or south-westerly course, and he can go rapidly ahead, following under the main ridge to avebury, or under the secondary ridge, three or four miles north of it, towards calne and bath. it is a game of skill which deserves a select reputation—to find an ancient road of the same character as the oxfordshire and berkshire icknield way, going west or south-west beyond wanborough. the utmost reward of this conjecturing traveller would be to find himself on the banks of the towy or beside the tomb of giraldus at st. david’s itself.

the end