After Kingsclere the country grew wilder, and presently crossing an extensive heath we dropped down into Newbury. I think it must have been market day there, for the streets of that pleasant town were thronged with carts and horses, to say nothing of pedestrians who would provokingly walk all over the roadway and not on the pavements. Some shouted to us, "Why don't you blow your horn?" and when we did others shouted, "Why do you keep blowing your horn; do you want all the road to yourself?" so we pleased no one, and made what haste we could to get out of the bustle, and to the London and Bath old mail road, smooth travelling and pleasant enough as far as Hungerford. [Illustration: OLD TOLL-HOUSE ON BATH ROAD.] A little before Hungerford my curiosity was aroused by the sight of a lonely castellated building by the roadside which I stopped to photograph. Then a man appeared upon the scene: somehow whenever you start to take a photograph, even in apparently deserted places--and the highway there just then seemed deserted--some one is almost sure to put in an appearance. I asked the man about the building. "That were an old tollhouse," answered he; "it used to mark the half-way between London and Bath." "Does it not to-day?" I queried. The man made no reply. I have frequently found that certain country-folk are curiously averse to jokes, however mild or innocent those jokes may be; they seem afraid lest you are poking fun at them. Taking no heed of my query he continued, for your true-born countryman loves to talk: "Travelling by motor-car, I sees; wonderful things them motor-cars be, to be sure, and they do put on the pace on this bit of road, I reckon; make a regular railway of it, that's what us say; fortunately there baint many housen on it," and so forth for a good five minutes, whilst I packed up my camera, and was therefore a perforced listener. I was somewhat surprised to hear, preserved to this day, the old Saxon plural of "en" in the word "housen" (though we still retain it in men, women, children, and oxen); the so-termed Yankee "I reckon" did not surprise me much, as I have frequently heard it thus employed in country districts, in Sussex especially.