en Man"
readily enough, with a country yokel to point the way, for which he
expected the price of a beer. In the palmy days of the robbing and
murdering traffic of Hounslow Heath it was a convenient refuge for
the Duvals and Turpins, and they made for it with a rush on occasion,
secreting themselves in a hiding-place which can still be seen.

This is in a little room on the left of the front door, and the
entrance lies at the back of an old-fashioned fireplace. A hole leads
to a passage which opens into a cavernous recess beneath, to which
there is ample room for anybody to descend. The local wiseacres
declare that there is, or was, a communication between this secret
chamber and another famous highwayman's inn, the old "Magpie"
directly on the Bath road, and that those who preyed on travellers
used to bolt from one house to the other like hunted rabbits. No one
seemingly has himself ever explored this mysterious subterranean
passage. Beyond Hounslow, on the Bath road, one passes through
Slough, leaving Windsor, Runnymede, and Datchet on the left, as
properly belonging to the routine tours which one makes from London
and calls simply excursions.

The Thames is reached at Maidenhead, where up-river society plays a
part which reminds one of the stage melodramas, except that there is
real water and real boat-races. It is a pretty enough aspect up and
down the river from the bridge at Maidenhead, but it is stagey and
artificial.

The hotels and restaurants of Maidenhead make some pretence of
catering to automobilists, and do it fairly well, after a suburban
fashion, but there is nothing of the flavour or sentiment of the old
inn-keeping days, neither are any of the establishments at all what
the touring automobilist (as distinct from the promenading, or
half-day excursion variety) expects and demands.

[Illustration: The Road By The Thames]

The Bath road runs straight on through Twyford to Reading, but we
made a detour via Great Marlow and Henley, merely for the
satisfaction of lunching at the "Red Lion Inn" at the latter place.
The great social and sporting attractions of the Thames, the annual
Henley regatta, had drawn us thither years ago, and we had enjoyed
ourselves in the conventional manner, shouting ourselves hoarse over
rival crews, lunching, picnic fashion, from baskets under the trees,
and making our way back to town by the railway, amid a terrifying
crush late at night. It was all very enjoyable, but onc