We left Nicholas and Smike looking down into the Devil's Punch Bowl, and now take up their journey over Rake Hill and the heights of Butser to this lonely roadside inn, which Dickens, using the latitude allowed to novelists, describes as twelve miles from Portsmouth. It is, in fact, thirteen miles, but its identity is unassailable, because there is no other house beside the road for miles on either hand. "Onward they kept with steady purpose, and entered at length upon a wide and spacious tract of downs, with every variety of little hill and plain to change their verdant surface. Here, there shot up almost perpendicularly into the sky a height so steep, as to be hardly accessible to any but the sheep and goats that fed upon its sides, and there stood a huge mound of green, sloping and tapering off so delicately, and merging so gently into the level ground, that you could scarce define its limits. Hills swelling above each other, and undulations shapely and uncouth, smooth and rugged, graceful and grotesque, thrown negligently side by side, bounded the view in each direction; while frequently, with unexpected noise, there uprose from the ground a flight of crows, who, cawing and wheeling round the nearest hills as if uncertain of their course, suddenly poised themselves upon the wing and skimmed down the long vista of some opening valley with the speed of very light itself. "By degrees the prospect receded more and more on either hand, and as they had been shut out from rich and extensive scenery, so they emerged once again upon the open country. The knowledge that they were drawing near their place of destination gave them fresh courage to proceed; but the way had been difficult, and they had loitered on the road, and Smike was tired. "Thus twilight had already closed in, when they turned off the path to the door of a roadside inn, yet twelve miles short of Portsmouth. "'Twelve miles,' said Nicholas, leaning with both hands on his stick, and looking doubtfully at Smike. "'Twelve long miles,' repeated the landlord. "'Is it a good road?' inquired Nicholas. "'Very bad,' said the landlord. As, of course, being a landlord, he would say. "'I want to get on,' observed Nicholas, hesitating. 'I scarcely know what to do.' "'Don't let me influence you,' rejoined the landlord. '_I_ wouldn't go on if it was me.'" And so here they stayed the night, much to their advantage, in a manner familiar to the readers of Dickens. Of their progress to Portsmouth the next day, with Mr. Vincent Crummles and his troupe, we will say nothing, for no other outstanding features of the road are described between this and Hilsea Lines. [Illustration: THE "COACH AND HORSES" INN.] [Sidenote: _CHALTON DOWNS_] Oxenbourne Downs are succeeded, on the map, by Chalton (originally "Chalkton") Downs; but they are all one to the eye that ranges over their almost trackless hills and hollows. XXXI