336 AN AMERICAN FARMER IX EXGLAXD. 



CHAPTER XLIX. 



Rural Police The " Anchor'' Inn The Garden '-Old Coaching 

 Times " Heath Land A Dreary Landscape Murder and a High- 

 way Adventure Human Vanity. 



Liphook, June 20th. 



TT7ALKED hither from Portsmouth to-day. For twenty miles 

 the road is through a hilly chalk country, much of it unen- 

 closed downs, generally interesting, and the walk at this season 

 agreeable. 



"We had, for a short distance, the company of a rural police- 

 man. He had his quarters, with several others, in a small cot- 

 tage in a village, was paid $4.70 a-week, and furnished with 

 three suits of clothes every year one for winter, one for summer 

 and one for Sundays, besides gloves, etc. The uniform is of 

 blue cloth, of a simple, semi-military fashion. He said no one 

 was employed in the force who was less than six feet high, and 

 that they were exercised in the use of small-arms. Of duties 

 he seemed to have no definite idea himself, but was ready to do 

 anything he could in the way of fighting roguery, when he should 

 be called upon by his officers. The only crime which he seemed 

 to apprehend in the neighborhood was rick-burning laborers 

 who were discontented and envious, or who had for any reason 



