might revive
other associations.

The picture of Pym presented itself to me very clearly. I remembered
that I had once thought that Pym was a place to which I might retire one
day in order to write the things I wished to write. I decided to make
the dream a reality, and I wrote to Mrs. Berridge at the Wood Farm,
asking her if she could let me have her rooms for the spring, summer,
and autumn.

II

I was all aglow with excitement on the morning that I set out for the
Hampden Hills. This was change, I thought, freedom, adventure. This was
the beginning of life, my real entry into the joy of living.

The world was alight with the fire of growth. May had come with a clear
sky and a torrent of green was flowing over field, hedge, and wood. I
remember that I thanked "whatever gods there be," that one could live so
richly in the enjoyment of these things.

III

Farmer Bates met me at Great Hittenden Station. His was the only
available horse and cart at Pym, for the Berridges were in a very small
way, and it is doubtful if they could have made both ends meet if Mrs.
Berridge had not done so well by letting her two spare rooms.

I have a great admiration for Farmer Bates and Mrs. Berridge. I regret
intensely that they should both have been unhappily married. If they had
married each other they would undoubtedly have made a success of life.

Bates was a Cockney by birth, but always he had had an ambition to take
a farm, and after twenty years of work as a skilled mechanic he had
thrown up a well-paid job, and dared the uncertainties which beset the
English farmer. That venture was a constant bone of strife between him
and his wife. Mrs. Bates preferred the town. It has always seemed to me
that there was something fine about Bates and his love for the land.

"Good growing weather, Mr. Bates," I said, as I climbed up into the
cart.

"Shouldn't be sorry to see some more rain," replied Bates, and damped my
ardour for a moment.

Just before we turned into the lane that leads up the long hill to Pym,
we passed a ramshackle cart, piled up with a curious miscellany of
ruinous furniture. A man was driving, and beside him sat a slatternly
woman and a repulsive-looking boy of ten or twelve years old, with a
great swollen head and an open, slobbering mouth.

I was startled. I jumped to the conclusion that this was the child I had
seen in the train, the son of Ginger Stott.

As we slowed down to the ascent of the long hil