We thanked him and accepted his invitation. We had a good supper, and after it sat and talked with the farmer perhaps for an hour or more, told him our plans, and all about ourselves and families. The farmer and his wife were very kind to us; they told us they had two children, a boy about our age, and a girl two or three years younger. Both of them were away on a visit to some relatives in a neighboring town, and I fancied that the farmer and his wife were rather glad of their absence, lest we might have aroused in their boy a desire to follow our example. We found that we had walked a little more than half the entire distance from our homes to Boston; if we traveled at the same rate we would reach Boston at sunset of the next day. As we were leaving the house of our hospitable friend in the morning, after a good breakfast, for which and the supper and lodging he would take no compensation, he suggested to us that we had better stop outside of Boston three or four miles, so as to enter the city in the morning. "Your best way of going into Boston is through Charlestown," he said. "When you get about three miles this side of Boston look out for a red house on the left of the road, with a clump of trees around it, and ask if that is where Mr. Johnson lives. Tell him you spent the night with me, my name is Samuel Bickford, and I recommended you to him. He may have the same suspicion of you as I had, and you can satisfy him just as you satisfied me as to your character, and you can convince him that you passed the night at my house by describing the place and the folks in it." We thanked him very kindly for his advice, and promised that if it ever came in our way we would certainly make a return for his hospitality. I little thought at that time that the opportunity would ever arrive, and certainly I did not, in my wildest dreams, imagine the way in which it would come about. As I look back now to our reception at this house, I take great credit to David and myself that we made such a favorable impression on our host. It was then about seventeen years since the close of the Revolutionary War, and during all this time the country had been overrun by idle fellows who served in the army, and after the disbandment of the troops took to a wandering, and, in many cases, a dissolute, life. They tramped along the principal highways, and, in fact, over pretty nearly all the roads of New England. They begged their food and lodging, though more frequently they stole the lodging outright, as they slept in barns without troubling themselves to ask the privilege of doing so.