h-looking men in black shirt sleeves and corduroy waistcoats ran
out to the train to open the carriage doors, and I forgot the gentleman
altogether. Till at length we came to his station.

When he had got out he turned to latch the door, and putting his head
in at the window, he said to me in the pleasantest manner possible:
"Good aufternoon, sir." He wasn't sore at me a bit! That was simply
his fashion of travelling, in silence.

I was going into the countryside, to the country places where the old
men have pleasant faces and the maidens quiet eyes. To fare forth upon
the King's highway, to hedgerows and blossoms and the old lanes of
Merrie England, to mount again the old red hills, bird enchanted, and
dip the valleys bright with sward, to the wind on the heath, brother,
to hills and the sea, to lonely downs, to hold converse with simple
shepherd men, and, when even fell, the million tinted, to seek some
ancient inn for warmth in the inglenook, and bite and drop, and where,
when the last star lamp in the valley had expired, I would rest my
weary bones until the sweet choral of morning birds called me on my way.

There was an ancient character going along the road. He walked with a
staff, a crooked stick. His coatless habit was the colour of clay; his
legs were bound about just below the knee by a strap (wherein, at one
side, he carried his pipe), so that his trowsers flared at the bottom
like a sailor's; over his shoulder he bore a flat straw basket. Under
his chin were whiskers; his eyes were merry and bright and his cheeks
just like fine rosy apples, with a great high light on each. I asked
of him the way and we trudged along together. "You are from Mericy,"
he said with delight.

He told me about himself. He was seventy-four and he had never had "a
single schooling" in his life. Capel was his home, a village of about
twenty houses which we were approaching, thirty miles or so from
London. The last time he been to London was when he was fifteen. He
had then seen some fireworks there. No fireworks in Capel, he said,
had ever been able to touch him since. He had been pushing on, he
said, pushing on, pushing on all the while.

"You were not born in Capel, then?" I said.

Born in Capel! Why, he had been born seven miles from Capel.

The difficulty was that I had overlooked the fact that everybody goes
out of London town at Whitsuntide. Village and county town I tried and
I could not find where to