, and from whom they receive a warm invitation to visit Manor
Farm on the morrow.

There is a fine view of Chatham and Rochester from the fields round Fort
Pitt, and on a bright sunny morning the air coming over from the Kentish
Hills is most refreshing, very different indeed to what it was on a
certain evening in Mr. Winkle's life, when "a melancholy wind sounded
through the deserted fields like a giant whistling for his house-dog."
We ramble about for an hour or more, and in imagination call up the
pleasant times which Charles Dickens, as a boy, spent here.

[Illustration: Fort Pitt, Chatham.]

Almost every inch of the ground must have been gone over by him. What a
delightful "playing-field" this and the neighbouring meadows must have
been to him and his young companions, before the railway and the builder
took possession of some of the lower portions of the hill which forms
the base of Fort Pitt. "Here," says Mr. Langton, "is the place where the
schools of Rochester and Chatham used to meet to settle their
differences, and to contend in the more friendly rivalry of cricket,"
and no doubt Dickens frequently played when "Joe Specks" in Dullborough
"kept wicket." In after life the memory of the past came back to
Dickens with all its freshness, when he again visited the neighbourhood
as the _Uncommercial Traveller_ in "Dullborough":--

"With this tender remembrance upon me" [that of
leaving Chatham as a boy], "I was cavalierly
shunted back into Dullborough the other day, by
train. My ticket had been previously collected,
like my taxes, and my shining new portmanteau had
had a great plaster stuck upon it, and I had been
defied by Act of Parliament to offer an objection
to anything that was done to it, or me, under a
penalty of not less than forty shillings or more
than five pounds, compoundable for a term of
imprisonment. When I had sent my disfigured
property on to the hotel, I began to look about
me; and the first discovery I made, was, that the
Station had swallowed up the playing-field.

"It was gone. The two beautiful hawthorn-trees,
the hedge, the turf, and all those buttercups and
daisies, had given place to the stoniest of
jolting roads; while, beyond the Station, an ugly
dark monster of a tunnel kept its jaws open, as i