IN WILTSHIRE 307 



another of my half-way houses of call, the Rack 

 and Manger, on the road to Winchester, or the 

 excellent shoemaker-sportsman-naturalist, whose 

 tent was pitched in a hamlet hard by the footway 

 up to Farley mount, or mound, burial-place of 

 the celebrated land high-diver, the noble steed 

 Chalkpit, whose godfathers and godmothers gave 

 him that name on account of his carrying his 

 rider over the edge of a chalkpit. A landmark 

 monument, familiar, I believe, to Winchester 

 boys, marks his tomb, and records also the 

 horse's having survived the adventure and won 

 a race or races on, I believe. Worthy Down. 

 Some day I may, perhaps, go to pick up my 

 marks again, and see how the beautiful spruce 

 hedges down by Houghton are doing. Indeed, 

 some day I shall land down Wessex way and not 

 come back any more, but settle with a nice holding 

 of my own, mostly upland downs, with a coppice 

 here and there, and big trees round the home- 

 stead, and at the low side of it water meadows, 

 with swift little brooks, and one big one that you 

 may call a river running through the valley to 

 make rich grass and harbour fat fish. That is 

 the country for the poor man to enjoy himself in 

 cheap. 



Such is the county I came to while breaking, 

 to me, fresh ground, working within a close 

 radius of Salisbury while down for the Bibury 

 meeting one hot September. Grand it was to 

 see the crops. I should have liked to have had 

 with me someone used to Leicestershire, in my 

 opinion the poorest apology for country — all 

 right for its particular sort of farming, but in my 

 eyes the least picturesque and the poorest after 

 the market-garden agricultural tract in the so- 



