On the day after the dinner-party at Hampton Privets Mr. Fenwick made his little excursion out in the direction towards Devizes, of which he had spoken to his wife. The dinner had gone off very quietly, and there was considerable improvement in the coffee. There was some gentle sparring between the two clergymen, if that can be called sparring in which all the active pugnacity² was on one side. Mr. Fenwick endeavoured to entrap³ Mr. Chamberlaine into arguments, but the Prebendary escaped with a degree of skill,—without the shame of sullen⁴ refusal,—that excited the admiration⁵ of Mr. Fenwick’s wife. “After all, he is a clever man,” she said, as she went home, “or he could never slip about as he does, like an eel⁶, and that with so very little motion.”

On the next morning the Vicar started alone in his gig. He had at first said that he would take with him a nondescript boy, who was partly groom⁷, partly gardener, and partly shoeblack, and who consequently did half the work of the house; but at last he decided⁸ that he would go alone. “Peter is very silent, and most meritoriously⁹ uninterested in everything,” he said to his wife. “He wouldn’t tell much, but even he might tell something.” So he got himself into his gig, and drove off alone. He took the Devizes road, and passed through Lavington without asking a question; but when he was half way between that place and Devizes, he stopped his horse at a lane that led away to the right. He had been on the road before, but he did not know that lane. He waited awhile till an old woman whom he saw coming to him, reached him, and asked her whether the lane would take him across to the Marlborough Road. The old woman knew nothing of the Marlborough Road, and looked as though she had never heard of Marlborough. Then he asked the way to Pycroft Common. Yes; the lane would take him to Pycroft Common. Would it take him to the Bald-faced Stag? The old woman said it would take him to Rump End Corner, “but she didn’t know nowt o’ t’other place.” He took the lane, however, and without much difficulty made his way to the Bald-faced Stag,—which, in the days of the glory of that branch of the Western Road, used to supply beer to at least a dozen coaches a-day, but which now,

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