Mrs. Humphry Ward at one time lived near Haslemere; and any one familiar with its environs can take a good guess at the locality of Robert Elsmere's Surrey parish, into which its squire's stately mansion may have been transposed from Loseley or Sutton. Mrs. Oliphant must have been here, since _The Cuckoo in the Nest_, one of the best of her later novels, evidently deals with the neighbourhood, making a curious medley of real and fictitious names, and hardly doing justice to the scenery. An account of Hindhead a century ago is presented in an older novel called the _King's Mail_. Then Mr. Baring-Gould's _Broom Squire_ opens with that grimly authentic romance Hindhead has of its own, the murder of a luckless sailor, commemorated by a stone at which Dickens makes Nicholas Nickleby sit down to rest on his weary tramp along the Portsmouth Road. A tomb in Thursley churchyard shows a rudely-carved representation of the crime, with this inscription-- IN MEMORY OF A generous but unfortunate Sailor, Who was barbarously murdered on Hindhead, On Sept. 24th 1786, BY THREE VILLAINS After he had liberally treated them, and promised them his further assistance on the road to Portsmouth. "When pitying eyes to see my grave shall come, And with a generous tear bedew my tomb, Here shall they read my melancholy fate, With murder and barbarity complete. In perfect health, and in the flower of age, I fell a victim to the ruffians' rage; On bended knees I mercy strove t'obtain, Their thirst of blood made all entreaties vain. No dear relation or still dearer friend, Weeps my sad lot or miserable end. Yet o'er my sad remains--my name unknown-- A generous Publick have inscribed this stone." The Huts Hotel exhibits a series of quaint pictures illustrating this tragedy. The murderers were hanged on what is still called Gibbet Hill, the highest point of the moorland, looking over to Haslemere from the edge of the Punch Bowl. The gibbet was soon blown down; then on its site a granite cross with a nobler inscription was erected by Chief Justice Sir William Erle. This spot, nearly 900 feet high, is the main point for picnic parties; and it seems time to tell the reader how to reach it.