The Swan

water, stands the hospitable "Swan Inn," a stark white box against the dark green hills. It was ten o'clock on a bright, warm, moonlit night when we shouted our arrival at the "Swan Inn" float and found our way to a tardy supper.

Inn

CHAPTER VIII

BENSINGTON WEIR TO READING

Midnight Swim - Bensington Weir - Wallingford Sir William Blackstone's Home Moulsford and South Stoke Streatley and Goring Pangbourne Reach Pangbourne - Hardwicke House, Charles I -Maple-Durham-Purley - Caversham - Reading.

Shillingford is an antiquated frontier village of red brick and thatched cottages of the better sort. It once divided the realms of the West Saxons and Mercians, but the fortunes of war brought it under the dominion of one master after another. The village proper lies on the left bank of the river opposite the "Swan Inn."

The barrister and the architect had arrived earlier in the evening, and now informed us that the inn, being overcrowded, its host would be unable to put us up for the night unless we adapted ourselves to the necessity for sleeping on cots in a room with six other fellows. sell said he would sleep in the tap-room, to which I interposed objections for reasons that are obvious.

Rus

We strolled out into the uncertain light of the night, past fragrant rose gardens, up the coach road toward Wallingford, and down to the river's edge where our boat lay upon the sod. The water glinted where the moon's rays fell full upon it; in the shadow it looked like ink. The willows were silent; the old bridge stood like a Roman wall unsentinelled and dead. Yonder the Yonder the village was fast

asleep. "Let's swim!"

Midnight
Swim

In a moment there were two whops, two splashes, and two men feathering their gleaming bodies through water that produced sensations unspeakably delicious. What can excel a vigorous swim at midnight with the moon floating overhead, after a day's work in the sun, and the freedom of an ancient kingdom to wallow in?

The next morning we were up and out at six o'clock. There had been eight of us asleep in one room; but as Englishmen are the best of fellows in a common difficulty, we had fared well. With the crowded tubbing and rubbing and dressing, that long, cotequipped room looked like the barracks of Lahore.

It is a a pretty reach of water from