An inn of the old-fashioned sort--A chat with "mine host"--A weird experience--Ghost stories--An ancient rectory house--A quaint interior--A haunted passage--Lost in a fog--The game of bowls--An old posting bill--The siege of Alton church--Ants as weather prophets. At Beaconsfield I put up for the night at "The White Hart," an ancient and homely hostelry where I found comfortable quarters, a landlord both interesting and obliging, a waitress civil and attentive, and excellent fare: such was my accidental good fortune. "The White Hart" is a very ancient though much altered building, dating, I was informed, from the days of Elizabeth; certainly some of its big and shaped beams upstairs testify to its ancientness. The coaching days were the days of its prime, for then one hundred horses were stabled there--so I afterwards learnt. The landlord received me with a cheery smile at the door: he knew how to welcome a guest. I casually told him I was tired and hungry, for I had travelled far that day; then he must needs at once concern himself about my dinner, so that I might not have to wait unduly for it, and promised me the best that the town could supply. I explained to him I was not an exacting traveller; he was far more anxious about my comfort and my fare than was I. That is the sort of landlord for me: very different his welcome to that one generally receives from the stony-eyed manager of a modern hotel. At these old-fashioned inns, with their friendly, good-natured landlords (for the one seems always to go with the other), I, but a tweed-clad, dust-stained traveller, always feel quite at home and at ease; there is such a charming simplicity and do-as-you-will air about them. Were I a millionaire I would choose them in preference to all others and desire no better. I merely sought a night's shelter, and however humble my chamber, if clean, it satisfied me. These inns give you their best, and who but the surliest could grumble at that when good is the best? I am an unpretending road-farer, though I fare in a car. I do not care to discuss my dinners when I get them; some days I made do with a tea, I found it more refreshing, but the dinner provided for me at that little inn of no pretence consisted of soup, fish, fowl, sweet omelette, with cheese to follow. Perhaps my hunger, begotten of a long day in fresh air, gave me an extra zest, but I thought at the time that never had I sat down to a better cooked dinner--I have certainly sat down to a worse in a wealthy man's house. This much for my modest inn I must say. Indeed, on the strength of its goodness I indulged in a small bottle of wine, and the wine was no worse than that of the same sort I have had at expensive London hotels at double the price, or perhaps even more.