134 THE EXETER ROAD 



Fair, some three and a half miles from the towu. 

 Whence they come, and ^Yhere they are hidden away 

 afterwards, is more than the stranger can tell, but it is 

 quite certain that their retreat is in some corner where 

 spiders dwell, and earwigs and other weird insects have 

 a home. Add to these facts the all-important one 

 that it is generally possible to walk the distance in a 

 shorter time, and you have a full portraiture of the 

 average Weyhill conveyance. 



This sleepy old place, older by many more centuries 

 than the oldest house remaining here can give any 

 hint of, was not always so quiet. There were alarums 

 and excursions (ending, however, w^ith not so much as 

 a cut finger) when James the Second, falling back 

 from Salisbury before the advance of his son-in-law, 

 William of Orange, halted here. There might have 

 been a battle in Andover's streets, or under the 

 shadow of Bury Hill, had James put a bolder front on 

 the business ; but instead of cutting up William's 

 Dutchmen, he just dined overnight, and hearing in the 

 morning that his other son-in-law. Prince George of 

 Denmark, had slunk off with Lords Ormond and 

 Drumlanrig, went off himself, strategically to the rear. 

 He was an obstinate and ridiculous bigot, and a quite 

 unlovable monarch, but he had a power of sarcasm. 

 ' What,' said he, hearing of the Prince's desertion, and 

 bitterly mimicking the absurd intonation of that 

 recreant's French catch-phrase, ' is ''Est-il 2^ossible ? " 

 gone too ? Truly, a good trooper would have been a 

 ojreater loss.' 



After these events, that era of bribery and corrup- 

 tion set in, which is mistakenly supposed to have 



