ccounted for by the fact that he had acquired a habit of
regular work, a craving for steady occupation; but it was also far more
due to the fact that Hugh had really, and almost as though by accident,
discovered his ruling passion. He was in truth a writer, a
word-artist; his only fear was, whether, in the hard-worked unmitigated
years of specified toil, he had not perhaps lost the requisite mental
agility, whether he had not failed to acquire the elastic use of words,
the almost instinctive sense of colour and motion in language, which
can only be won through constant and even unsuccessful use. That
remained to be seen; and meanwhile his plans settled themselves. He
found a small, picturesque, irregularly-built house crushed in between
the road and the river, which in fact dipped its very feet in the
stream; from its quaint oriel and gallery, Hugh could look down, on a
bright day, into the clear heart of the water, and survey its swaying
reeds and poising fish. The house was near the centre of the town; yet
from its back windows it overlooked a long green stretch of rough
pasture-land, now a common, and once a fen, which came like a long
green finger straight into the very heart of the town. There was a
great sluice a few yards away, through which the river poured into a
wide reach of stream, so that the air was always musical with the sound
of falling water, the murmur of which could be heard on still nights
through the shuttered and curtained casements. The sun, on the short
winter days, used to set, in smouldering glory, behind the long lines
of leafless trees which terminated the fen; and in summer the little
wooded peninsula that formed part of a neighbouring garden, was rich in
leaf, and loud with the song of birds. The little house had, in fact,
the poetical quality, and charmed the eye and ear at every turn, the
whisper of the little weir outside seeming to brim with sweet contented
sound every corner of the quaint, irregular, and low-ceiled rooms, with
their large beams and dark corners.

So Hugh settled here after his emancipation, and for the first time in
his life realised what it meant to be free. He woke day after day to
the sensation that he had no engagements, no ties; that he could
arrange his hours of work and liberty as he liked, go where he would;
that no one would question his right, interfere with his independence,
or even take the least interest in his movements. His freedom was at
first