hey were mostly soft clays, she
cut them out very easily, till she came down, or nearly down, to the
harder freestone rocks which run along on our left hand, miles away; and
so she scooped out this great vale, which we call here the Vale of White
Horse; and further on, the Vale of Aylesbury; and then the Bedford Level;
and then the dear ugly old Fens.

Is this the Vale of White Horse? Oh, I know about it; I have read _The
Scouring of the White Horse_.

Of course you have; and when you are older you will read a jollier book
still,--_Tom Brown's School Days_--and when we have passed Swindon, we
shall see some of the very places described in it, close on our right.

* * * * *

There is the White Horse Hill.

The White Horse Hill? But where is the horse? I can see a bit of him:
but he does not look like a horse from here, or indeed from any other
place; he is a very old horse indeed, and a thousand years of wind and
rain have spoilt his anatomy a good deal on the top of that wild down.

And is that really where Alfred fought the Danes?

As certainly, boy, I believe, as that Waterloo is where the Duke fought
Napoleon. Yes: you may well stare at it with all your eyes, the noble
down. It is one of the most sacred spots on English soil.

Ah, it is gone now. The train runs so fast.

So it does; too fast to let you look long at one thing: but in return, it
lets you see so many more things in a given time than the slow old
coaches and posters did.--Well? what is it?

I wanted to ask you a question, but you won't listen to me.

Won't I? I suppose I was dreaming with my eyes open. You see, I have
been so often along this line--and through this country, too, long before
the line was made--that I cannot pass it without its seeming full of
memories--perhaps of ghosts.

Of real ghosts?

As real ghosts, I suspect, as any one on earth ever saw; faces and scenes
which have printed themselves so deeply on one's brain, that when one
passes the same place, long years after, they start up again, out of
fields and roadsides, as if they were alive once more, and need sound
sense to send them back again into their place as things which are past
for ever, for good and ill. But what did you want to know?

Why, I am so tired of looking out of the window. It is all the same:
fields and hedges, hedges and fields; and I want to talk.

Fields and hedges, hedges and fields? Peace and plenty, plenty and
peace. However, it may