the county. The Hog's Back has a treble
charm belonging wholly to the roadway itself; its width, its spacious
grassy rides on each side of the broad hard riband of metal that runs
white and unswerving east and west, and most gracious of all, its deep
and exuberant hedges. All along the road in a light wind you will get
the scent of bed-straw and thyme and clover from the green border of the
road, and in the short down grass find the plants that love
chalk-ground, like the little blue milkwort, which spreads like a film
over the higher slopes of the ridge in summer. If the roadside is
scented with flowers, so are the hedges. Guelder rose and dog rose and
privet blossom side by side with elder and spindle wood; above holly and
hazel and buckthorn stand up gnarled and wind-driven yews, bent over the
road from the south-west. To the south, it is often only through the
gate-gaps in the hedge that you can see out over the flank of the hill;
on the northern side the hedge is lower--low enough, indeed, to be
broken in summer by tall spikes of mullein, yellow against the grey-blue
air over the heaths of Pirbright and Worplesdon. The highest point of
the road lies a mile beyond Wanborough on the way to Guildford; here you
are over five hundred feet up, and the road drops gradually, ending with
a sudden slope almost as soon as Guildford, bricky and cheap-looking
from this aspect, comes into view.

[Illustration: _Barn at Wanborough._]

CHAPTER VI

GUILDFORD

The prettiest High Street in the south of England.--Guilou, Wey, and
Wye.--The Castle.--A legend of murder.--Looking at St.
Christopher.--Royal hunters.--Stephen Langton.--Cloth and how to
stretch it.--Aubrey scents a swindle.--King Monmouth after
Sedgmoor.--A pike for a baby.--The keeper at Bramshill.--Mysterious
windows.--Admirable calm.--The Queen's.--The Regent and the
Apse.--St. Mary's Wall-paintings.--An ancient school.--The
Angel.--Pepys at the Red Lion.--Sparagus for supper.--A Vanished
Heart.--The undaunted clockmaker.

To arrive at Guildford by train is like walking into a garden over a
rubbish heap. In the grace of its building, the charm of its colour, the
fascination of the prospects of its hillside High Street, no town in
Surrey, and perhaps only Oxford in England, is comparable with it. But
between the railway station and the High Street it is desolation and
blank walls. A few pretty old cottages jut out over a n