THE LAST COACH 299 



county directory in tlie hotel cottee-room, is a weari- 

 ness. 



Once a year, during Honiton Great Fair, this long, 

 empty street is not too wide ; but all the year round, 

 and every year, the broad liighway hence on to 

 Exeter is a world too spacious for its shrunken traffic. 

 Broad selvedges of grass encroach as slyly as a land- 

 grabbing, enclosing country gentleman upon this 

 o-enerous width of macadamised . surface, and are 

 allowed their will of all- but a narrow strip sufficient 

 for the present needs of the traffic. It is fifty-five 

 years since the Great Western Kailway was opened 

 throuo'h to Exeter, and durino- that more than half a 

 century these long reaches of the road have been 

 deserted. Do belated cyclists, wheeling on moonlit 

 nights along this . tree-shaded road, ever conjure up 

 a picture of the last mail down ; the farewells at the 

 inns, the cottagers standing at their doors, or leaning 

 out of their windows, to see the visible passing away 

 of an epoch ; the flashing of the lamps past the 

 hedo-erows, and the last faint echoes of the horn 

 sounding in melancholy fashion a' mile away ? If 

 they do not, why then they must be sadly lacking in 

 imagination, or ill-read in the Story of the Roads. 



Where the roads branch in puzzling fashion, four 

 and. a half miles from Honiton, and all ways seem to 

 lead to Exeter, there stands on the grassy plot at the 

 fork a roadside monument to a missionary bishop. 

 Dr. Patteson, who, born 1st April 1827, met martyr- 

 dom, tooether with two other workers in the mission- 

 field, in Xew Zealand, in 1871. He was the eldest 

 son of Sir John Patteson, of Feniton Court, near by, 



