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passed. The Talbot Arms Hotel, where John Parsons Cook died, is a bold-faced house, not unlike a cotton mill from the outside, except that the
    windows are too large; and behind stretches an acre of back yard, surrounded by stables and coach-houses, which are well filled during the celebrated six-day Horse Fair held in June, and during the lesser fairs in April, October and December; but quite empty for the rest of the year. Here you may well catch sight of Mr Thomas Masters, a trim old gentleman in drab breeches and a cutaway coat, standing at the door of his hotel, propped on a knotted

    Thb High Street, Rugeley, Showing Palmer's House, and The Talbot Arms Hotel
    blackthorn stick. He has lived here for seventy-four years, and what he does not know about Rugeley and its people is hardly worth knowing. He rides a brown mare thirty years of age: 'The two of us make a good bit over a hundred together,' he will tell you.
    Opposite, and set back a litt le from the road, behind a fore - lawn no bigger than a billiard table and a few evergreens enclosed by iron railings, stands the two-storeyed building with broad modern windows and a grey 'rough-cast' facade, which Dr Palmer occupied at the time of his arrest. Its neighbours are the humble Bell Inn on the left side, and the house of Mr John Bennett, Shoemaker, on the right.
    As you pass on, the shops become bigger and you even come across a bookseller's, Mr James's, with a fashionable mahogany front of plate-glass. The first turning to the left is an ugly lane, like a back street in Manchester, leading to the foundries. If you detain and question an inhabitant who has strayed into the street, he will tell you: 'Down there stands the old Post Office, where Palmer's friend, Mr Cheshire, got into trouble on the Doctor's account. We have a new Post Office now. And here's Mr Ben Thirlby's chemist shop—he worked for Dr Palmer—and yonder's the crockery shop where the Doctor used to deal, and there's George Myatt, the saddler's, where he had his harness repaired, and yonde r's the tailor who made his suits.'

    The Post Office, Rugeley
    Everything in Rugeley is 'Dr Palmer' now; no other topic of conversation will serve. By the way, if we give him his courtesy titl e of 'Doctor', which is a country custom when surgeons arc concerned, we trust to be forgiven. The correct form of address is, of course, 'Mr Palmer', or William Palmer, Esq.
    So on to the Bank—open from ten to three. Here Dr Palmer kept his flickering account, sometimes reduced to a few shillings, but then again swollen to thousands of pounds, only to shrink again from his losses on the racecourse or the demands of g reedy money-lenders. Now you are in Brook Street, the tree-lined scene of the annual Horse Fair: as broad as Smithfield, and as long as Regent Street, with plenty of room to inspect the horses, even should they stampede and charge down towards the Market Square like a cavalry regiment. The tall maypole facing you could serve for a three-decker's mast. Boys sometimes swarm to the top
    —the young Palmer brothers wer e well-known for their climbing feats—but they must surely hurt their legs on the iron hooping halfway up. The houses on both sides of Brook Street are large and commodious, and to the sou th-west, in the far background, the dark hills of Cannock Chase frame a pleasantly rural view of
sheep, cows and immense wag ons standing before the millers door. _

    Thielby's Shop, Rug eley
    The miller's wife proves to be both comely and loquacious. She says: 'The landscape around us is most beautiful for miles: nothing else but noblemen's mansions and grounds. Do you think the aristocracy would come and settle here, so far from London, if it wasn't so sweet a spot? There's Shoughborough Park, the Marquess of Anglesey's place, within four miles—"Beau Desert" they call it—with the most lovely country you can imagine all along the Shoughborough road. In the other direction there's Lord Hatherton's park and