or came round.
"It's a rare long ride for thrippence." So it proved to be--through
wildernesses which were half meadow and half slum, my cicerone at every
hundred yards pointing out the notable features of the landscape. On our
left I ought to see the so-and-so public house; on our right the
football ground--I should know it by the grand-stand jutting above the
palings; further on were brickworks; further still a factory which, my
nose would have told me, even if Mr. Briggs had not, dealt with
chemicals; then, on the skyline, a pit-head; then another; then a mining
village with three different kinds of methodist church and two picture
palaces; then a gap of dreary, dirty fields. And then, nearing dusk, the
village where my friend lived, and where also was the terminus of the
tram route.

We quitted the tram and walked down a street of those squalid brick
tenements which coal-mining seems to germinate like a rash upon the
earth's surface. The debris and the scaffoldings of pits were dotted
about the adjacent countryside. Sooty cabbage-patches occupied the
occasional interspaces in the ranks of houses. Briggs directed me across
a cinder path in one of these cabbage-patches. "See them three 'ouses at
the bottom of the 'ill? The end one's mine." We approached. No sign of
the wife. Surely she would be on the look-out for her husband? Also
there was a sister and a brother-in-law--the latter in a prosperous way
of business as a grocer near-by: Briggs had told me of them. Would not
they be watching for him? I began to be anxious. Not once, but several
times, I had heard of the wounded soldier returning to his home and
finding no home: both home and wife had gone. (Those are bitterly tragic
tales, which a realist must write some day.) Still, as we came nearer, I
saw nobody at the cottage door. "Is th' door open?" asked Briggs. Yes,
it was open. When we were at the end of the cabbage-patch, and I could
discern the interior of the cottage parlour (into which the door opened
direct), it became clear that three persons were there. One of them, a
man, obviously the brother-in-law, came and peeped out of the window at
us, and turned and spoke to his companions. Of these two, both women,
one rose from her chair and the other remained seated. But none of the
three came to the door.

I have met northern dourness and the inarticulate manner which is such a
contrast to the gushing and noisy effusion of the south. By a paradox it
is not i