"Pretty steep bit here," said a man upon my left.
A man upon his left replied to him.
"Beastly! That's an old quarry ahead; you can get down it, but it isn't easy. There's the railway in front; there's a devil of a fence, and a devil of a hedge to tackle before you reach it. Then ditto, ditto on the other side, then a brook, then a plantation of young trees which want thinning, and which is not so well adapted to horse exercise as the maze at Hampton Court."
The speaker's knowledge of the country proved to be correct--at least, as far as Philipson and I investigated it, which was as far as the old quarry. It might have been possible to get down it--indeed, the speaker proved that it was by going down it himself, and inducing three other idiots to go down with him; but precipice-climbing on horseback had not been the sort of experience we had been in search of when we went "stagging." Philipson and I refrained. We remained up above with several other sensible persons, and watched those enthusiastic "staggers" tearing--with no slight expenditure of labour--bars out of the strongly and carefully-constructed fence, the property of the railway company. Then, with their pocket-knives, they commenced to cut a gap in the thickest six-foot hedge, an appurtenance of the same corporation. When we had seen so much, Philipson and I had seen enough. We induced our horses to retrace their steps uphill.
The descent had been delightful, the ascent was not so pleasant. If it was half a mile down, it was, certainly, three miles up. Nor was the sum total of our satisfaction heightened when, after sundry divagations, we found ourselves in what bore a singular resemblance to that unending lane which we had originally--and so gladly!--quitted.
"It strikes me," remarked Philipson, as he looked to the right and to the left of him, "that I've been here before. I seem to know this lane."
I seemed to know it, too. But it was no use making the worst of things. I endeavoured to put a fair front upon the matter.
"I dare say if we keep on we shall get somewhere soon."
"I hope we shall," said Philipson, in what struck me as being a tone of almost needless gloom.
We did keep on--that I do earnestly protest. Not very fast, it is true--our horses, for reasons of their own, seemed to object to hurry. I said nothing, and as Philipson, if possible, said still less, conversation languished. We had pursued the devious twistings of that eternal lane for what seemed to be ten miles, and which, possibly, were nearly two, when an exclamation from Philipson roused me to a consideration of the surroundings.