310 WAYFARING NOTIONS 



me the other day in what may reasonably be 

 called a lonely part near Salisbury Plain ; but 

 the same story tells itself also within a dozen 

 miles of London as the crow flies, where the 

 population outside the villages themselves is as 

 thin almost as in a newly settled country. 



A good deal might be written about the 

 Salisbury downs and valleys such as Wylie, or 

 rather Fisherton De La Mere, Mr F. R. Hunt's 

 fine fishing in the stream, which always makes 

 me want to get in and have a swim, and the 

 beautiful gallops that insist on my walking to 

 look at them ; of the charm of the little villages 

 up the valley to Wylye (the name is spelt all 

 manner of ways, and the milestones and Her 

 Majesty's Post Office department do not agree 

 on the subject), and of one hamlet in particular 

 where, barring that the mise-en-scene was 

 peculiarly English, as English as Constable's 

 '' Nearest way in Summer Time," I might fancy 

 myself among our soldier men fighting, say, in 

 South Africa. Along came a puffing, quick- 

 moving, road traction-engine, with a train of 

 big wagons, dusty as they might be on the 

 veldt, and their military occupants, powdered to 

 match, looking hard and fit, not troubling too 

 much about appearances, but ready for anything 

 at any moment. Sun did not damage these 

 hard-working warriors — a convoy who, curiously 

 enough, called a halt exactly abreast of an inn 

 where, also curiously, I happened to be at the 

 time — but it made the inside more appreciable to 

 the drouthy. I am running on, I find, but I 

 must have just a word about this pub., or rather 

 its users. A party, evidently '' regulars " — i.e., 

 stock customers— were partaking of their lunch 



