Just where the road from Thursley rejoins the highway stands the "Huts" Inn, now enlarged and refurbished, and nothing less, if you please, in these days than the "Royal Huts" Hotel. "Ma conscience!" I wonder what friend Cobbett would have thought, _and_ said. But, believe me, nothing less than this would serve the turn of Hindhead district now-a-days, for it fast becoming as suburban as (say) Clapham. Do you want a building-plot, carved out of a waste, where nothing has yet bloomed but the tiny purple bells of the heather or the golden glory of the gorse? Here, then, is your chance, for building-plots fringe the road where, indeed, the trim-built villa has not already risen. Professor Tyndall, who built a house for himself just here, in 1882, selected the situation both for its health-giving air and for its seclusion, but his example served only to advertise the attractions of the place, and the astonishing favour with which Hindhead is now regarded as a residence is directly attributable to him. No one was less pleased than himself at this sudden popularity of a district that had but a few years previously been a more or less "howling" wilderness, for "he was always curiously sensitive to the beauty of scenery," disliked suburbs, and was also singularly sensitive to being overlooked from any neighbouring house. This preference for reclusion led to the building of the hideous screens which hid from his gaze an ugly house close at hand, and created so much angry controversy a few years ago: screens that to-day remain an unfailing reminiscence of the Professor. _Sic monumentum requiris, circumspice_, to quote the old tag. XXI And now, save for the slight rise of Cold Ash Hill, it is all down-hill to Liphook, and excellent going, too, on a fine gravelly road, closely compacted and well kept. The country, though, is still wild and unfertile, and for long stretches, after passing the "eligible plots" of Hindhead, the road is seen narrowing away in long perspectives with never a house in sight. In midst of all this waste stands a lonely roadside inn--the "Seven Thorns" a wayside sign proclaims it to be--which draws its custom the Lord only knows whence. It is frankly an inn for refreshing and for passing on your way: no one, I imagine, ever wants to stay there; and by its cold and cheerless exterior appearance one might readily come to the conclusion that no one even lived there. The sign is singular, and seems either descriptive or legendary. If legend it has, no whisper of it has ever reached me; while as for descriptiveness, the "seven thorns" are simply non-existent; and so the sign is neither more nor less a foreshadowing of the place than the average Clapham "Rosebank" or the Brixton "Fernlea." [Illustration: TYNDALL'S HOUSE: SCREENS IN THE FOREGROUND.]