fellers, call yerselves carters,' he says; 'a man like that's worth
a dozen o' you.' Well, they couldn' ha' done it. A dozen of 'em 'd
ha' scrambled about, an' _then_ not done it! Besides, their _hosses_
wouldn't. But this feller the old farmer says to 'n, 'I never
believed you'd ha' done it.' 'I thought mos likely I should,' he
says. But he never had much to say."

A few hundred yards further along the Hog's Back the road drops down
south-east to Seale, the first of the three ancient and interesting
villages which lie under the ridge between Farnham and Guildford. Seale
is a fascinating little place. It consists only of a few cottages, shy
and red-roofed, deep among high hedges, bushy dells and reedy meadows,
with wheatfields and barleyfields clothing the chalky slopes above. The
church has been rebuilt, but has some inscriptions worth looking at. One
is an epitaph on a young officer, Edward Noel Long, who was drowned at
sea. According to the inscription:--

"On his way to join the British forces in Spain, he, with others of
his regiment, perished in the sea near Cape St. Vincent, during the
confusion of a fatal accident occasioned by the _Isis_ man-of-war
falling on board the transport on which he was embarked on the night
of the 6th March, 1809."

That was just after Corunna. A carved bas-relief represents the _Isis_
under full sail "falling on board" the transport.

[Illustration: _Seale._]

Here, under the Hog's Back north and south, nearly all the cottages are
old and nearly all have gardens. One perfect little building stands not
far from Seale on the road to Puttenham, bowered in vines and quaintly
chimneyed, with white-curtained windows opening on a low wall and
stone-crop and high box borders, and, when I saw it in July, bunches of
pink and white mallows glowing under an old oak door. No cottages count
sunnier hours than these that stand about the long strip of green
country under the chalk downs. This part of Surrey, perhaps, has changed
as little as any part during the last twenty or thirty years, which have
added so many miles of brick and slate to Surrey villages and towns;
probably the greatest change has been in the roads. Mrs. Henry Ady, for
instance, writing of the Pilgrims' Way just fifteen years ago, speaks of
the road that runs through Seale, Puttenham, and Compton as being "a
grassy lane, not always easy to follow, and little used in places." The
road a