A FINE INN SIGN

III

their passengers didn't. It was said to be the finest sign on the road. More than once, to settle a wager, the coach waited whilst the board was measured. It's a sad pity, but the scrolled iron-work is corroding away, besides getting bent out of place here and there from the heat of the sun, but I expect it will last my time for all that. The owner would like to restore the old inn, only there is so little road custom now, it would not pay to do so." "But how about the cyclists," we queried; "do you not obtain a good deal of custom from them?" "Well, not very much, sir. Somehow, they seem mostly to pass along without stopping. Now and then one or two may stop just for a glass of ale, but the majority of them simply slow down a bit as they pass by, and exclaim, 'What a funny old place!' or a similar remark; but a few odd glasses of ale and a lot of remarks don't go far towards paying rent. You see, there's nothing to come here for, this isn't a tourist country. Now, were we only near to a wateringplace, we should get a lot of folks a-driving over to see the old house, refreshing themselves, and baiting their horses. Then there would be money in it." For myself, I am selfishly glad that the "Bell" at Stilton is not near any fashionable resort, otherwise there would be a great chance of its picturesqeness being improved away. As it is, it may still, with a little repairing now and then, last for centuries, to delight the eye of antiquaries and artists yet unborn -a bit of history in stone of the never-returning past.

Then the landlord asked us to go into his garden

new rose.

at the back, and there presented us with one of his roses. "It's a rare kind," he said; "they call it a A gentleman living near here gave a big price for a stock one like it; but when he showed me his purchase I told him that I had just the same kind in my garden, and it had been there for seven years; and he would not believe me till he came and saw for himself. There's what There's what you call a spa spring

in the garden. In olden times it used to be considered a cure for some complaints, but it seems forgotten now. It is the only spring in the place; all the other water has to be got from wells.'

The name of Stilton is, of course, a familiar household word, as the little town gave its name to the now famous cheese. I find my copy of Paterson has the following note about the place ::-"Stilton has long been celebrated for the excellence of its cheese, which not unfrequently has been called the English Parmesan. It is asserted that this article was first made by a Mrs. Paulet of Wymondham, near Melton Mowbray, in Leicestershire, who supplied the celebrated Cooper Thornhill, who kept the Bell Inn in this village, with this new manufacture, which he often sold for 2s. 6d. per lb., and hence it is said to have received its name from the place of sale. Thornhill was a famous rider, and is recorded to have won the cup at Kimbolton with a mare that he accidentally took on the course after a journey of twelve miles." Another performance of this sporting worthy was to ride to London and back for a wager within twelve hours. I find by my I find by my road-book the distance for the double journey to be 150 miles,

This

so that he must have ridden over twelve miles an hour; and a good day's work in truth!

Most of the landlords of the old coaching hostelries were sporting men, and wonderful stories are told of their doings, stories that probably, like most wines, have improved with age. Indeed, a vast amount of inn-lore (we have folk-lore, why not innlore?) may be picked up by the road traveller of to-day, from talkative landlords and communicative ostlers, if he be a good listener. I should think that I have gathered this journey sufficient anecdotes. of the road, good, bad, and indifferent, to fill two chapters at least. But the stories lose much when retold in prosaic print; it is the persons who tell them, and the manner of telling, together with suitable surroundings, that give them a special charm. To do them justice you must hear them in a remote country hostelry from the lips of some jovial old host -for a few such may still be found on the waywhose interest lies in that direction; and if told in his low-ceilinged parlour, hung round with prints of coaching and sporting subjects, produced in the prechromo-lithographic age, so much the better; if over a pipe, better still. Then perchance mine host may settle down and warm up to his subject, when one story will inevitably suggest another, and that still another, and so on apparently ad infinitum, till your note-book is filled with all sorts of curious histories. Or failing the landlord, the "wrinkled ostler, grim and thin," may well supply his place; and the rambling old inn-yard where some of the wonderful feats related took place, or are presumed to have

taken place, forms a very appropriate and telling background to the tale. We have had the Tales of my Landlord. Who will give us the Tales of an Ostler? These, judging from my own selection, might, with a little necessary weeding, prove interesting and, in certain cases, even sensational reading.

I well remember, some few years back, when touring in Yorkshire, the aged ostler of a solitary inn on the moors, where we were weather-bound for a time, related to me, by way of pleasantly passing the time, a blood-curdling story about the house in the "good old times." I must say that the story suited well the building, for it was a bleak, inhospitable-looking house, with long untenanted, unfurnished chambers, its stables going to decay, and mostly given over to cobwebs and half-starved mice-the whole place looking doubly dreary in the dripping rain a gray drooping sky and a soughing wind serving only too successfully to accentuate its dismalness. 'Ah," exclaimed the ostler as we stood together sheltering from the steady downpour in a corner of the stables, "there were queer doings in the old place. I've heard tell, in past times, many a belated traveller who put up here for the night never got no further if he were supposed to have much money upon him; that is, for the landlord. then, they do say, combined inn - keeping with robbery. There were one bedroom in the house where they used to put likely travellers to sleep, and this had a secret door to it. It's yon room with the low window overlooking the yard, and, well, next morning the traveller had disappeared no one knew

A GRUESOME STORY

115

where; but a lot of skeletons have been found when digging in the moor round about.

However, one night the landlord caught a Tartar. There was a scuffle in the room, and some pistol shots were heard, and the landlord was found dead on the floor : the traveller turned out to be a famous highwayman, who so cowed the rest of the house that he rode off in the morning with a good share of the landlord's plunder to which he quietly helped himself." But then the story may not be true, or only true in part, for tradition is a sad scandal-monger; and tradition, unlike a rolling stone, gathers substance as it goes on. I should perhaps state, in fairness to the worthy ostler's tale-telling talent, that I have only given his grim story in brief, and have purposely omitted some very gruesome and thrilling details that he positively gloated over. These my

readers can supply for themselves if they be so minded, providing a trap-door in the floor of the chamber, with a deep well immediately below, and flavouring to taste.

But to return to the "Bell" at Stilton, from which I have wandered far afield. This gray and ancient hostelry, with its weather-tinted walls, produced an impression upon us difficult to analyse ; it verily seemed as though there must be some old legend or mystery connected with the building and only waiting to be discovered. The glamour of

romance seemed to brood over it: a romance in which the "knights of the road" figured prominently, and we began to weave a little story "all our own," after the most approved manner of Harrison