of very small
belongings; and I was free of Latin and the Assembly Catechism, free as
the air--my own master. All the world was hushed in slumber. There was
no one to stop me or bid me return to the roof where I had been happy,
and to the parents whom I was to return to, to love more than I had ever
done before, and whom it then saddened me to think that I might never see
again. Not a soul was in the street, and the few shops which adorned it
were shut up--cottagers and shopkeepers, they were all in the arms of
Morpheus. I hastened on, not wishing to be seen by any one; but there
was no fear of that, only cows, horses at grass, and pigs and hens and
birds were conscious of my flight, and they regarded me with the
indifference with which a Hottentot would view an ape. In my path was a
hill on which I stayed awhile to take a last look at the deserted
village. The white smoke was then curling up from the chimneys and the
common round of daily life was about to begin. How peaceful it all
seemed. What a contrast to my beating heart! There was not one of those
cottages behind into which I had not been with my father as he visited
the poor and the afflicted--not a lane or street along which I had not
trundled my hoop with boyish glee--not a meadow into which I had not gone
in search of buttercups and cowslips and primroses or bird's nests. I
only met one man I knew, the miller, as he came from the mill where he
had been at work all night, and of him I stood somewhat in awe, for once
when the mill was being robbed he had sat up alone in darkness in the
mill till the robbers came in, when he looked, through a hole in the
upper floor, as they were at their wicked work below, and had thus
identified them; and I had seen them in a cart on their way to Beccles
gaol. Perhaps, thought I, he will stop me and ask me what I am about;
but he did nothing of the kind, and henceforth the way was clear for me
to London, where I was to fight the battle of life. Did I not write
poetry, and did not I know ladies who were paid a guinea a page for
writing for the Annuals, and could not I do the same? And thus thinking
I walked three miles till I came to a small beershop, where I had a
biscuit and a glass of beer. The road from thence was new to me, and how
I revelled in the stateliness of the trees as I passed a nobleman's (Earl
Stradbrooke's) mansion and park. In another hour or so I found myself at
Yoxford, then and still known as t