been told that the fire happened a year before I was
born, I suppose that I have heard it so often spoken of that in the end I
came to believe that I myself had seen it. Yet one thing I can surely
remember, that, being sent to a dame's school to keep me out of mischief,
I used to stand by her side pricking holes in some picture or pattern
which had been drawn upon a piece of paper.

"In 1813, after the death of Mr Wyatt, my father took the curacy of
Rendlesham, where we lived till the year 1815. The rector of Rendlesham
at that time was Dr Henley, {8} who was also principal of the East India
College of Haileybury, so that we lived in the rectory, Dr Henley rarely
coming to the parish. That house remains unchanged, as I shall have
occasion to tell. Lois Dowsing was our cook, and lived nearly forty
years in my father's service--one of those faithful servants who said
little, but cared dearly for us all.

"Of Rendlesham I have clear recollection, and things that happened in it.
It was there I first learnt to read. My mother has told me that I could
not be taught to know the letter H, take all the pains she could. My
father, thinking that the fault lay in the teacher, undertook to
accomplish the task. Accordingly he drew, as he thought, the picture of
a hog, and wrote a capital H under it. But whether it was the fault of
the drawing--I am inclined to think that it was--or whether it was my
obstinacy, but when it was shown me, I persisted in calling it 'papa's
grey mare.'

"There was a high sandbank not far from the house, through which the
small roots of the bushes growing protruded. My brother and I never
touched these. We believed that if we pulled one of them, a bell would
ring and the devil would appear. So we never pulled them. In a ploughed
field near by was a large piece of ground at one end, with a pond in the
middle of it, and with many wild cherry-trees near it. I can remember
now how pretty they were with their covering of white blossoms, and the
grass below full of flowers--primroses, cowslips, and, above all,
orchises. But the pond was no ordinary one. It was always called the 'S
pond,' being shaped like that letter. I suspect, too, that it was a pond
of ill repute--perhaps connected with heathen worship--for we were warned
never to go near its edge, lest the Mermaid should come and _crome_ us
in. _Crome_, as all East Anglians know, means 'crook'; and in later
years I remember a Suffolk boy