would have been hard to find, and on even
my most prolonged wanderings the end of each day usually brought extreme
fatigue. This, too, although my only companion was slow--slower than the
poor proverbial snail or tortoise--and I would leave her half a mile
or so behind to force my way through unkept hedges, climb hills, and
explore woods and thickets to converse with every bird and shy little
beast and scaly creature I could discover. But mark what follows. In the
late afternoon I would be back in the road or footpath, satisfied to
go slow, then slower still, until--the snail in woman shape would be
obliged to slacken her pace to keep me company, and even to stand still
at intervals to give me needful rest.

But there were compensations, and one, perhaps the best of all, was that
this method of seeing the country made us more intimate with the people
we met and stayed with. They were mostly poor people, cottagers in small
remote villages; and we, too, were poor, often footsore, in need of
their ministrations, and nearer to them on that account than if we
had travelled in a more comfortable way. I can recall a hundred little
adventures we met with during those wanderings, when we walked day after
day, without map or guide-book as our custom was, not knowing where the
evening would find us, but always confident that the people to whom it
would fall in the end to shelter us would prove interesting to know and
would show us a kindness that money could not pay for. Of these hundred
little incidents let me relate one.

It was near the end of a long summer day when we arrived at a small
hamlet of about a dozen cottages on the edge of an extensive wood--a
forest it is called; and, coming to it, we said that here we must stay,
even if we had to spend the night sitting in a porch. The men and women
we talked to all assured us that they did not know of anyone who could
take us in, but there was Mr. Brownjohn, who kept the shop, and was the
right person to apply to. Accordingly we went to the little general shop
and heard that Mr. Brownjohn was not at home. His housekeeper, a fat,
dark, voluble woman with prominent black eyes, who minded the shop
in the master's absence, told us that Mr. Brownjohn had gone to a
neighbouring farm-house on important business, but was expected back
shortly. We waited, and by and by he returned, a shabbily dressed,
weak-looking little old man, with pale blue eyes and thin yellowish
white hair. He cou