last two years of my life at Oulton
were the happiest years of my life. I have never cared for dry or hilly
countries since. Wherever I have been in the world, I have always longed
for the Broads, where the rivers wander among reeds for miles, losing
themselves in thickets of reeds. I have always thought tenderly of the
flat land, where windmills or churches are the only landmarks, standing
up above the mist, in the loneliness of the fens. But when I was nearly
thirteen years old (just after the death of Charles the Second) my
father died, leaving me an orphan. My uncle, Gabriel Hyde, a man about
town, was my only relative. The vicar of Lowestoft wrote to him, on my
behalf. A fortnight later (the ways were always very foul in the winter)
my uncle's man came to fetch me to London. There was a sale of my
father's furniture. His books were sent off to his college at Cambridge
by the Lowestoft carrier. Then the valet took me by wherry to Norwich,
where we caught a weekly coach to town. That was the last time I ever
sailed on the Waveney as a boy, that journey to Norwich. When I next saw
the Broads, I was a man of thirty-five. I remember how strangely small
the country seemed to me when I saw it after my wanderings. But this is
away from my tale. All that I remember of the coach-ride was my arrival
late at night at the London inn, a dark house full of smells, from which
the valet led me to my uncle's house.

I lay awake, that first night, much puzzled by the noise, fearing that
London would be all streets, a dismal place. When I fell asleep, I was
waked continually by chiming bells. In the morning, early, I was roused
by the musical calling made by milkmen on their rounds, with that
morning's milk for sale. At breakfast my uncle told me not to go into
the street without Ephraim, his man; for without a guide, he said, I
should get lost. He warned me that there were people in London who made
a living by seizing children ("kidnapping" or "trepanning" them, as it
was called) to sell to merchant-captains bound for the plantations. "So
be very careful, Martin," he said. "Do not talk to strangers." He went
for his morning walk after this, telling me that I might run out to play
in the garden.

I went out of doors feeling that London must be a very terrible place,
if the folk there went about counting all who met them as possible
enemies. I was homesick for the Broads, where everybody, even bad men,
like the worst of the smugglers