There
are the barrows still, solemn and silent, like ships in the calm sea,
the sepulchres of some sons of men. But of whom? It is three miles from
the White Horse--too far for the slain of Ashdown to be buried there.
Who shall say what heroes are waiting there? But we must get down into
the Vale again, and so away by the Great Western Railway to town,
for time and the printer's devil press, and it is a terrible long and
slippery descent, and a shocking bad road. At the bottom, however, there
is a pleasant public; whereat we must really take a modest quencher, for
the down air is provocative of thirst. So we pull up under an old oak
which stands before the door.
"What is the name of your hill, landlord?"
"Blawing STWUN Hill, sir, to be sure."
[READER. "Stuym?"
AUTHOR: "Stone, stupid--the Blowing Stone."]
"And of your house? I can't make out the sign."
"Blawing Stwun, sir," says the landlord, pouring out his old ale from a
Toby Philpot jug, with a melodious crash, into the long-necked glass.
"What queer names!" say we, sighing at the end of our draught, and
holding out the glass to be replenished.
"Bean't queer at all, as I can see, sir," says mine host, handing back
our glass, "seeing as this here is the Blawing Stwun, his self," putting
his hand on a square lump of stone, some three feet and a half high,
perforated with two or three queer holes, like petrified antediluvian
rat-holes, which lies there close under the oak, under our very nose.
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