I poke the porkers thoughtfully with a stick in the place where their ribs should be, but they are of such an abbatical plumpness that my ferrule fails to discover any "osseous structure." (I thank thee, Owen, for that phrase!) They respond with piercing cries that recall the shrieks and the yells of a witches' sabbath on the Brocken, as presented before a quailing Lyceum audience,--and their horrid chorus brings the farmer on the scene. "Who drives fat oxen should himself be fat," to quote the famous classical _non sequitur_; and how much more should it apply to him who fattens pigs to unwieldy masses of unconverted lard and pork! To do justice to the quotation, he is fleshy and of a full habit. "Fine creeturs, them," says he. "Aye," say I. "Thirty score apiece, if they're a pound," he continues. They might be a hundred score for all I know; but no man likes to acknowledge agricultural ignorance, and so I agree with him, heartily, and with much appearance of wisdom. "Pooty creeturs, _I_ say," continues the farmer, smacking a broad-bellied beast, with white bristles and pink flesh covered with black splotches. That dreadful creature looks up a moment from the trough, with ringed snout dripping liberally with hog-wash, and gazes pathetically at me for acquiescence. "Yes: fine animals," I say, in a non-committal voice. "Pictures, they are," says their owner decisively. That settles the matter, and I am off, to seek the road to Liphook. If the excellence of the great highways of England is remarkable, the tangled lanes and absolute rusticity of the roads but a stone's throw from the main routes call no less for remark. Here, just a little way from Liphook, and in the immediate vicinity of a railway, I might have been in the deepest wilds of Devon, so meandering were the lanes, so untamed the country. An old pack-horse trail, still distinct, though unused these many generations past, wandered along, amid gorse and bracken, and footpaths led in perplexingly-different directions. [Sidenote: _A STRANGE RENCOUNTER_] Amid this profusion of wild life, with the dark foliage of the fir trees, the lighter leaves of the beech, and the gaily-flowered hedgerows on either hand, there appeared before me the most incongruous wayfarer: a Jingle-like figure, tall and spare, with a tightly-buttoned frock-coat, and a silk hat of another era than this, set well back upon his head--one who might have wandered here from Piccadilly in the '50's and lost his way back. I should not have been surprised had he asked news of the Great Exhibition; of Prince Albert, or the Emperor of the French. However, he merely said it was a fine day. "Yes, it was," I said; "but could he direct me to Liphook?" "Liphook?" said he, as though he had never heard the name; "I'm afraid I can't. I'm a stranger in these parts." And then he walked away. I believe he was a ghost! [Illustration: "CONSIDERING CAP."] XXIII