But to return to my path: upon my life, after having regained the direction, the fellow has followed it straight on for more than a quarter of a mile. It is wonderful, it is marvellous! I never saw such a thing before! But, nevertheless, it is true that there was nothing either to attract or drive him to one side or the other; and then, as if to make up for lost time, what zig-zags he takes afterwards! Round that clump of firs, under that bank, through between the birch-trees, here and there over the wildest part of the moor, till he passes close by the edge of that deep sand-pit, which must have rested a long time since it contributed any of its crumbling particles to strew the floor of the public-house, or sprinkle the passage of the cottage; for the bushes are growing thick down the slope, and there seems as if there had been a little kitchen-garden in the bottom, and a human habitation. In the reign of that King George, under whose paternal sceptre flourished the English nation in the times whereof I am writing, there was a cottage in that sand-pit, a small lonely house, built of timber, laths, and mud, and containing two or three rooms. The materials, as I have shown, were poor, ease and comfort seemed far from it, yet there was something altogether not unpleasant in the idea of dwelling in that sheltered nook, with the dry sand and the green bushes round, and feeling, that let the wind rave as it would over the hill, let it bend down the birch-trees, and make the pines rustle and crack, and strike their branches against each other, the fury of the tempest could not reach one there--that let the rain pour down in ever such heavy torrents, as if the windows of Heaven were open, the thirsty ground would drink up the streams as they fell, as if its draught were insatiable. There were signs of taste, too, about the building, of a humble and natural kind. Over the door had been formed with some labour a little sort of trellised portico, of rough wood-work, like an arbour, and over this had been trained several plants of the wild-hop and wild-clematis, with one solitary creeping garden-rose. Sticks had been placed across the house, too, to afford a stay for these shrubs to spread themselves over the face of the cottage, if they had any strength to spare, when they had covered the little portico, and two or three wandering shoots, like truant children, were already sporting along the fragile path thus afforded them.