' On, on he went; now
speculating on a turn; now pulling a scratch map he had made on a bit of
paper out of his waistcoat-pocket; now inquiring the name of any place he
saw of any person he met. So he proceeded for five or six miles without
much difficulty; the road, though not all turnpike, being mainly over good
sound township ones, It was at the village of Swineley, with its
chubby-towered church and miserable hut-like cottages, that his troubles
were to begin. He had two sharp turns to make--to ride through a
straw-yard, and leap over a broken-down wall at the corner of a cottage--to
get into Swaithing Green Lane, and so cut off an angle of two miles. The
road then became a bridle one, and was, like all bridle ones, very plain to
those who know them, and very puzzling to those who don't. It was evidently
a little-frequented road; and what with looking out for footmarks (now
nearly obliterated by the recent rains) and speculating on what queer
corners of the fields the gates would be in, Mr. Sponge found it necessary
to reduce his pace to a very moderate trot.
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