We paid a toll at the bridge by which we crossed the Arun, and that was the only toll we had on the way. Years ago, when I was much younger and took long driving tours, the tolls I had to pay at the toll-gates often cost me more than my dinner, to say nothing of the provoking fact of having frequently to pull up, and often besides be kept waiting for change. Those old toll-keepers were a race apart, and in remote places would dally at the gate whilst they asked me for the news of the day. Such trifles seem to make those old times appear farther off than they are. It was slow travelling then, and with tired horses often your choice of an inn for the night was "Hobson's choice," for you could not go farther--yet these leisured old times make pleasant memory. Now wherever you go you can rarely escape the morning newspaper; to do so is a test of remoteness indeed. What with telegraphs, telephones, railways and motors, news travels fast and the world is made smaller. It was the coach that brought the first tidings of events in times past, and its arrival was eagerly watched for in the towns and villages on the way: so was the news of Trafalgar and Waterloo spread through the land. Some of those toll-keepers, it is said, were in league with the highwayman, and signalled to him about any likely passing and lonely traveller by an open or a shut window, at night by means of a light in the same window; but this may be scandal. At least we know that some rascally landlords of inns were accomplices of the highwayman; rumour indeed has it that Dick Turpin was so indignant at a certain landlord giving information to a rival "when under articles to him" that he threatened to shoot that landlord. In return for his services the toll-keeper was never robbed of his day's takings. There is a tale told of a certain lady of quality who in those exciting times of travel always used to take with her a purse filled with base coin to hand over: but how, I wonder, did that lady become possessed of so much base coin? It was a pleasant drive by the side of the river to the pretty village of Bramber, with its half-timber cottages and fragment of a Norman castle on a wooded knoll. I think it was at Bramber that a friend told me a few years ago he visited an interesting little museum and found the following admission notice: "Adults twopence, Children One penny, Ladies and gentlemen what they will." I wonder how many extra pennies good folk were induced to part with for the glory of being in the latter category? A somewhat similar notice I read in an inn garden: "People must not pluck the flowers. Ladies and gentlemen never do." There was some art in that notice.