parently in the direction of the lighthouse.

This means, however, only that he is to go round by the back, and
the _detour_ is not to be regretted, as it leads by Peggotty's garden,
which in its way is a marvel, a monument of indomitable struggle
with adverse circumstances. It is not a large plot of ground, and
perhaps looks unduly small by reason of being packed in by a high
paling, made of the staves of wrecked barrels and designed to keep
the sand and grit from blowing across it. But it is large enough
to produce a serviceable crop of potatoes, which, with peas and
beans galore occupy the centre beds, Peggotty indulging a weakness
for wallflowers and big red tulips on the narrow fringe of soil
running under the shadow of the palings. The peculiarity about the
garden is that every handful of soil that lies upon it has been
carried on Peggotty's back across the four-mile waste of shingle
that separates the sea-coast from Lydd. That is, perhaps, as severe
a test as could be applied to a man's predilection for a garden.
There are many people who like to have a bit of garden at the back
of their house. But how many would gratify their taste at the expense
of bringing the soil on their own backs, plodding on "backstays"
over four miles of loose shingle?

One important change has happened in this little household since I
last sat by its hearthstone. Ham is married, and is, in some
incomprehensible manner, understood to reside both at Lydd with
Mrs. Ham and at the cabin with his mother. As for Mrs. Peggotty,
she is as lively and as "managing" as ever--perhaps a trifle smaller
in appearance, and with her smooth clean face more than ever
suggestive of the idea of a pebble smoothed and shaped by the action
of the tide.

I find on chatting with Peggotty that the old gentleman's mind is in
somewhat of a chaotic state with respect to the wrecks that abound
in the bay. He has been here for forty-eight years, and the fact is,
in that time, he has seen so many wrecks that the timbers are, as it
were, floating in an indistinguishable mass through his mind, and
when he tries to recall events connected with them, the jib-boom of
"the _Rhoda_ brig" gets mixed up with the rigging of "the _Spendthrift_,"
and "the _Branch_, a coal-loaded brig," that came to grief thirty years
ago, gets inextricably mixed up with the "Rooshian wessel." But,
looking with far-away gaze towards the Ness Lighthouse, and sweeping
slowly round as far east as