Pain's Hill looms up finely as one turns the corner of Cobham Street and crosses the Mole by the successor of the bridge built here by the "Good Queen Maud," in place of the ford where one of her maids-of-honour was drowned. There are more inns here, and their humped and bowed roofs make an excellent composition in a sketch, with the remarkable mop-like trees of Pain's Hill Park seen in silhouette beyond. To Pain's Hill succeeds Tartar Hill and Wisley Common; sombre fir trees lining the road and reflected in the great pond that spreads like some mystic mere over many acres. The "Huts" Hotel, however, rebuilt and aggressively modern, is not at all mystic, and neither are the crowds of thirsty, dusty cyclists who frequent it on summer days. XIV [Sidenote: _CYCLING_] The Portsmouth Road, from London to Ripley, has, any time these last twenty years, been the most frequented by cyclists of any road in England. The "Ripley Road," as it is generally known among wheelmen, is throughout the year, but more especially in the spring and summer months, alive with cycles and noisy with the ringing of cycle-bells. On Saturday afternoons, and on fine Sundays, an almost inconceivable number take a journey down these twenty-three miles from London, and back again in the evening; calling at the "Angel," at Ditton, on the way, and taking tea at their Mecca, the "Anchor," at Ripley. The road is excellent for cycling, but so also are a number of others, equally accessible, around London, and it must be acknowledged that the "Ripley Road" is as much favoured by a singular freak of fashion in cycling, and as illogically, as a particular walk in Hyde Park is affected by Society on Sundays. But in cycling circles (apt phrase!) it is quite the correct thing to be seen at Ditton or at Ripley on a Sunday, and every one who is any one in that sport and pastime, be-devilled as it is now-a-days with shady professionalism and the transparently subsidized performances of the makers' amateurs, must be there. The "Ripley Road," now-a-days, is, in fact, the stalking-ground of self-advertising long-distance riders, of cliquey and boisterous club-men, and of the immodest women who wear breeches awheel. The tourist, and the man who only has a fancy for the cycle as a means of healthful exercise, and does not join the membership of a club, give the "Ripley Road" a wide berth. The frequenters of this road became in 1894 such an unmitigated nuisance and source of danger to the public in passing through Kingston-on-Thames, that the local bench of magistrates were obliged to institute proceedings against a number of cyclists for furious driving, and for riding machines without lights or bells. According to the evidence given by an inspector of police, no fewer than twenty thousand cyclists passed through Kingston on Whit Sunday, 1894. [Illustration: FAME UP-TO-DATE.]