THE DOWNS IN WINTER 43 



right brands, I made for the pleasant holding 

 under the hills at Plumpton, the place, or rather 

 at whose Place — the Place with a capital P — 

 carp and golden pippins first occurred, so far as 

 England is concerned. After the filthy fogs one 

 was indeed well off to strike a spell of any sort 

 of decent weather, a piece of luck not quite 

 achieved, for Plumpton, like London, had its 

 thick mist — not a poisonous one, but a view 

 obscurer and unpleasant to the "pipes." There 

 was I on an afternoon in late December set at 

 liberty in the betwixt and between time, just 

 before the sun went down and the moon came up, 

 as they did, dead-heating vividly in the process, 

 at the end of a little trudge from the race-ground 

 to the top of the high ridges where lies the plain 

 on which Simon de Montfort and Henry III. 

 fought. I was very nearly monarch of all I 

 surveyed from the crest of Plumpton Borstal, 

 drinking in draughts of frosty air by the chestful, 

 and bound for a cruise across country towards 

 Brighton. A charming undertaking this is not 

 for anyone at all nervous or a trifle indefinite in 

 geographical information. Chance of going 

 wrong in the dusk that was creeping on, despite 

 two great glares east and west, was not to be 

 put quite out of mind, and added to the expedi- 

 tion that tinge of excitement supposed to be 

 desirable ; though, personally, I would rather be 

 without even the most distant prospect of lying- 

 out all night on hilly and daley uplands with not 

 a ten-thousand-to-one outside hope of coming 

 across a soul ; but to make up for that, very 

 great probability of wandering over a chalk pit 

 or, minor evil, coming a cropper every few yards 

 as you got among the furzes and thorns, or on 



