at the nose of our boat had got fixed under the
woodwork of the lock, while the in-coming water was rising all around it,
and tilting it up. In another moment we should be over. Quick as
thought, we each seized an oar, and a vigorous blow against the side of
the lock with the butt-ends released the boat, and sent us sprawling on
our backs.

[Picture: The photograph] We did not come out well in that photograph,
George and I. Of course, as was to be expected, our luck ordained it,
that the man should set his wretched machine in motion at the precise
moment that we were both lying on our backs with a wild expression of
"Where am I? and what is it?" on our faces, and our four feet waving
madly in the air.

Our feet were undoubtedly the leading article in that photograph.
Indeed, very little else was to be seen. They filled up the foreground
entirely. Behind them, you caught glimpses of the other boats, and bits
of the surrounding scenery; but everything and everybody else in the lock
looked so utterly insignificant and paltry compared with our feet, that
all the other people felt quite ashamed of themselves, and refused to
subscribe to the picture.

The owner of one steam launch, who had bespoke six copies, rescinded the
order on seeing the negative. He said he would take them if anybody
could show him his launch, but nobody could. It was somewhere behind
George's right foot.

There was a good deal of unpleasantness over the business. The
photographer thought we ought to take a dozen copies each, seeing that
the photo was about nine-tenths us, but we declined. We said we had no
objection to being photo'd full-length, but we preferred being taken the
right way up.

Wallingford, six miles above Streatley, is a very ancient town, and has
been an active centre for the making of English history. It was a rude,
mud-built town in the time of the Britons, who squatted there, until the
Roman legions evicted them; and replaced their clay-baked walls by mighty
fortifications, the trace of which Time has not yet succeeded in sweeping
away, so well those old-world masons knew how to build.

But Time, though he halted at Roman walls, soon crumbled Romans to dust;
and on the ground, in later years, fought savage Saxons and huge Danes,
until the Normans came.

It was a walled and fortified town up to the time of the Parliamentary
War, when it suffered a long and bitter siege from Fairfax. It fell at
last, and then the w