part and parcel of the scenery. It had
been recently inhabited by a man of letters, a poet and a dreamer; and
a fitter spot to dream in eye never rested on.

My enthusiasm rose as I drew nearer to it, There was a warm, homely
compactness about it, as of a nest among the trees. The forest turf
came to the very gate; a young orchard of five hundred trees lay to the
southward of the house, a green paddock to the northward; and, as my
advertisement informed me, the entire price of this eligible freehold
property was five hundred pounds! Why, then, was its possessor so
eager to be quit of it? I walked round the house, went through its
rooms, took the view from various windows, already treating it as mine,
and it was long before I came upon the cause. That cause was not its
remoteness or its solitude; it was lack of water. There was no well,
and to have sunk a well would have been costly. The only water-supply
was the rain-water from the roofs. Men can laugh at a good many
deprivations, but deprivation of water is a serious business. I found
upon inquiry that the nearest spring was two miles away. In time of
drought--and in this high district summer drought was normal--it was
this or nothing. Water was then sold by the bucket, nor was it easy to
find any one to fetch and carry for you. I had no mind to condemn
myself to drink the droppings of a roof for life, nor to perform my
ablutions by the aid of a teacup and a saucer. The place, for all its
beauty, was plainly uninhabitable as the Sahara. A camel might have
lived there with content; it was no place for a family used to the
delights of tubbing. I had remarked in the owner of the house a
certain elementary lack of linen; the cause was now explained. I think
his only method of attaining cleanliness must have been by what is
called 'the dry air process.'

This adventure lives in my memory, not only because it had delightful
elements, but because it was the last of a long series, which might
have been called more truthfully misadventures. For an exhilarating
month I scoured the neighbourhood of London, living in a happy fever of
enterprise and hope, but without result. July came, and my problem was
still unsolved. I had already given notice to terminate the tenancy
of my house in London, and there seemed a fair prospect that September
would find me homeless. At my present height of good spirits I cannot
say that even this prospect dismayed me. If the w