orst came to the
worst I meant to take to the road in one of those convenient vans much
used by travelling hawkers. I had long envied the extraordinary
snugness of those itinerant habitations; to be a Dr. Marigold seemed
the happiest of fates; rent free, and finally delivered from
tax-collectors and their tribe, I might yet roam the world as a
superior kind of vagrant. I knew indeed a young friend of mine who had
adopted this very life. He sold tracts and Bibles upon village greens,
and I promise you no mansion had a warmer glow of comfort than the
interior of his yellow van when the lamp was lit at night for supper.
He has since found his way to a lonely missionary station in Peru; but
he has often told me that he was never happier than when he played the
part of pious gipsy on the village greens of England. At a pinch I
thought that I could do what he had done; it was a romantic trade, and
a new _Lavengro_ might be written on it.

But whatever dreams of permanent and dedicated vagrancy I might
entertain, manifestly my first duty was to find a cottage if I could.
At last, and almost by accident, I came on what I wanted. I had gone
to the Lake District in the month of August, and one day I struck into
a lonely road to the north-west of Buttermere. Half an hour's walk
brought me to a tiny hamlet beside a rushing stream, and here, for the
first time in all my wanderings, I found a genuine deserted cottage.
To speak by the book there were two cottages exactly similar, covered
by a single roof. They stood upon a gentle slope; a group of pines
formed a shelter from the north, the moorland rose behind them, and the
river sang through a contiguous glen. My first glance told me that
they had not long been out of occupation. They showed no marks of
dilapidation, and the little gardens, though weed-grown, gave signs of
recent care. A woman whom I met told me their history. They had long
been inhabited by two families, father and son. A few months
previously these families had sailed for Canada. No one had applied
for the cottages, for in that part work was scarce, and the foundries
and shipyards on the coast drew away the younger population. The
rent--it seemed incredible--was two shillings a week. The woman
yielded to what she thought my idle curiosity, and brought me the keys.
Each cottage contained four rooms, and the two could easily be thrown
into one. They were dry and water-tight, the walls whitewashed and