They journeyed backward.  They were in such a maze of lanes that the old man was master, and Redworth vowed to be rid of him at the first cottage.  This, however, they were long in reaching, and the old man was promptly through the garden-gate, hailing the people and securing ’information, before Redworth could well hear.  He smiled at the dogged astuteness of a dense-headed old creature determined to establish a claim to his fee.  They struck a lane sharp to the left.

‘You’re Sussex?’ Redworth asked him, and was answered:  ‘Naw; the Sheers.’

Emerging from deliberation, the old man said:  ‘Ah’m a Hampshireman.’

‘A capital county!’

‘Heigh!’ The old man heaved his chest.  ‘Once!’

‘Why, what has happened to it?’

’Once it were a capital county, I say.  Hah! you asks me what have happened to it.  You take and go and look at it now.  And down heer’ll be no better soon, I tells ’em.  When ah was a boy, old Hampshire was a proud country, wi’ the old coaches and the old squires, and Harvest Homes, and Christmas merryings.—­Cutting up the land!  There’s no pride in livin’ theer, nor anywhere, as I sees, now.’

‘You mean the railways.’

‘It’s the Devil come up and abroad ower all England!’ exclaimed the melancholy ancient patriot.

A little cheering was tried on him, but vainly.  He saw with unerring distinctness the triumph of the Foul Potentate, nay his personal appearance ‘in they theer puffin’ engines.’  The country which had produced Andrew Hedger, as he stated his name to be, would never show the same old cricketing commons it did when he was a boy.  Old England, he declared, was done for.

When Redworth applied to his watch under the brilliant moonbeams, he discovered that he had been listening to this natural outcry of a decaying and shunted class full three-quarters of an hour, and The Crossways was not in sight.  He remonstrated.  The old man plodded along.  ‘We must do as we’re directed,’ he said.

Further walking brought them to a turn.  Any turn seemed hopeful.  Another turn offered the welcome sight of a blazing doorway on a rise of ground off the road.  Approaching it, the old man requested him to ’bide a bit,’ and stalked the ascent at long strides.  A vigorous old fellow.  Redworth waited below, observing how he joined the group at the lighted door, and, as it was apparent, put his question of the whereabout of The Crossways.  Finally, in extreme impatience, he walked up to the group of spectators.  They were all, and Andrew Hedger among them, the most entranced and profoundly reverent, observing the dissection of a pig.

Unable to awaken his hearing, Redworth jogged his arm, and the shake was ineffective until it grew in force.

‘I’ve no time to lose; have they told you the way?’

Andrew Hedger yielded his arm.  He slowly withdrew his intent fond gaze from the fair outstretched white carcase, and with drooping eyelids, he said:  ‘Ah could eat hog a solid hower!’