The guest-rooms of the "Royal Anchor" are called by regal names, and their titles of "King," "Queen," "Crown," or "George" are blazoned upon the doors with great pomp and circumstance; but as I have retired between the sweet-smelling, lavender-scented sheets in one or other of the spacious up-stair rooms and have dowsed the glim of my bedroom candle, I have considered with satisfaction not so much that "Farmer George" and his snuffy old _hausfrau_ may have slept here, as that the dearest of old sinners and inconsequent gossips--I name Samuel Pepys--came to Liphook and "lay here" o' nights, in receipt of many conjugal reproaches, I doubt not, for certain gay vagaries, darkly hinted at with many "God forgive me's," in the pages of those confessions which men know by name as "Pepys' Diary." Mr. Samuel Pepys, Secretary to the Admiralty first, and amiable gossip afterwards--although I fancy we generally reverse those titles to recognition--was among those travellers who have left some sign of their travels along these miles of heaths and open commons--this wildest high-road in all England. Apart from his suburban trip to Putney, we find the diarist chronicling journeys to and from Portsmouth. On May 4, 1661, he left Petersfield. "Up in the morning," says he, "and took coach, and so to Gilford, where we lay at the 'Red Lyon,' the best inne, and lay in the room where the King lately lay in, where we had time to see the Hospital, built by Archbishop Abbott, and the free schoole, and were civilly treated by the Mayster. "So to supper and to bed, being very merry about our discourse with the Drawers" (as who should say the Barmen) "concerning the minister of the towne, with a red face and a girdle. "_5th, Lord's Day._ Mr. Creed and I went to the red-faced Parson's church, and heard a good sermon of him, better than I looked for. Anon we walked into the garden, and there played the fool a great while, trying who of Mr. Creed or I could go best over the edge of an old fountaine well, and I won a quart of sack of him. Then to supper in the banquet-house, and there my wife and I did talk high, she against and I for Mrs. Pierce (that she was a beauty), till we were both angry." Seven years later, on August 6, 1688, to wit, Mr. Samuel Pepys was called on business to Portsmouth, and Mrs. Pepys determined to go with him, at an hour's notice. You may notice that Pepys says her readiness pleased him, but that would seem to be a shameless want of frankness altogether unusual in that Diary, wherein are set forth the secret thoughts and doings, not altogether creditable to him who set them down so fully and freely. [Illustration: SAMUEL PEPYS.] [Sidenote: _WAYFARING_]