THE DOWNS IN WINTER 41 



mud and muck-stained high-lows — was so out of 

 sorts and despondent as to lose all sense of 

 locality and direct us altogether wrong. 



Not much of a holiday, eh ? Well, things 

 might have been better, but might have been 

 worse. Self and partner might have lost ourselves 

 and been discovered mere remains when the frost 

 broke up or the fog lifted. One of us might 

 have sprained his ankle and the other had to 

 carry him if he could, and neither of us twain 

 might have reached — as at length we did — 

 William Goater's old training stable, where John 

 Porter was a long while, later Fred Barrett's, and 

 now claiming Mr Bob Gore for master. That 

 might have happened, and might — indeed did — 

 not, for we fetched these hospitable quarters all 

 right, and were sent on our way rejoicing in the 

 turn of luck to renew acquaintance with Steyning's 

 White Horse and the sausage-making butcher 

 opposite — none better. Later, the light was 

 good but the going awful. We had to blunder 

 along, slipping and slithering, half-thawed, frozen 

 clayey paths and byways, and so under the hills 

 through Edburton and Carrington, with its 

 sparkling spring rivulets, to the Royal Oak, 

 Poynings, where is purveyed a strong ale — 

 mighty grateful, comforting, and staying on a 

 cold day, and a credit to the local brewer. Then 

 we fared by way of Squire Gurdon's at New- 

 timber, in whose family history is the story of 

 a steward's murder over by Pyecombe ; Damny 

 Park, home of the Campions, of whom in their 

 connection with Norton Folgate and the West 

 Indian rum and slave trade Sir Walter Besant 

 wrote so pleasantly ; Clayton, whose tunnel calls 

 to memory a direful smash ; and pleasant 



