The World is a Caty Full of Crooked Streets Death is ye Markett plass Whereall must meet if life Was merchandise That men Could Buy ye Rich Would Allways live ye poor must Die. Purchasable immortality would be a much more potent inducement to become a multi-millionaire than any now existing. But what a terrible thing that would be for the Diamond Kings, the Railway, Oil, Steel, and other monarchs to become immortal. As it is, however, a live tramp has the laugh of a dead millionaire—and a better chance of the Elysian Fields than Dives. The town of Atherstone, a mile long, breaks the loneliness of Watling Street, half a mile beyond Mancetter. It is chiefly one long street, of the miscellaneous character common to the small country town: not unpleasing, nor highly interesting. The exit from the town is marked by a railway level crossing, become famous of late years as a source of contention between the local governing body and the London and North-Western Railway. Beyond, the villages of Merevale and Baddesley Ensor are seen to the left; and Dordon, a mushroom growth called into unlovely existence by the new pits of the Hall End Colliery. “Stony Delph” is the odd name of a village two miles onward, adjoining Wilnecote. It is a name alluding to some quarry, or “stony digging,” now forgotten. (Compare, “When Adam _delved_ and Eve span.”) Wilnecote, down into whose street the road dips from Stony Delph, is a place of brick, tile, and pottery kilns, with a railway-station, formerly called “Two Gates.” Where Wilnecote ends and Fazeley begins is not easy to tell, save perhaps by reference to the river Tame, here dividing Warwickshire and Staffordshire. Fazeley has that maritime and Dutch-like appearance belonging to all places settled beside some old canal, and the canal here is one of the oldest, with long rows of wharves and equally long rows of cottages opposite. Both have seen their best days. Now, good-bye for awhile to level roads, for the Watling Street on entering Staffordshire goes straight for the steepest hill in the neighbourhood, and thereby proves its Roman ancestry. This is the hill leading to Hints. When you have reached the top, another hill, abrupt and entrenched, with gloomy woods on its brow, scowls down upon it from the left hand. It had a history, without possibility of a doubt, but it has not come down to us; and those who defended and those others who attacked are alike gone to the shores of the Styx, without leaving any other traces save those dumb and reticent earthworks that loom so provokingly mysterious against the sky.