At length the violence of the storm somewhat abated, and as he passed the 'Eagle,' at Snaresbrook, from behind a bank of wild watery-looking clouds the moon rose slowly and as if reluctantly, whilst the wind grew higher and swept over the lonely country lying towards and beyond Barkingside in blasts that almost took away the young man's breath. On the whole he was not sorry when he reached that great public-house which stands where three roads meet near the pond at Leytonstone. There he dismounted, and giving Bess in charge of a man who knew the mare and her rider well, he walked on past the church, down the little bye-street leading to the picturesque station, across the line, and so to a new road intersecting an estate that had been recently cut up for building, and where already houses were dotting the fields, where two or three years previously there was no sign of human habitation. One of these houses belonged to Mr. Gibbons; he had bought it for a very low price, and nobly indifferent to the horrible newness of its appearance, to the nakedness of its garden, and that general misery of aspect peculiar to a suburb while in its transition state from country to town, he removed his household goods from Islington, where he had previously resided, and set himself at work to make a home in the wilderness. He was a man content to wait for trees to grow, and shrubs to mature, and creepers to climb. His was the order of mind which can plant an asparagus bed and believe the three years needful for it to come to perfection will really pass away in regular course. He procured a mulberry-tree and set it, and he would have done the same with a walnut had the size of his garden justified the proceeding. As it was, he looked forward to eating fruit grown on his own walls and espaliers; he directed the formation and stocking of his garden with great contentment. He built a greenhouse; he ordered in a Virginia creeper and a Wistaria, which he hoped eventually to see cover the front of his house; he put up a run for his fowls; and he talked with unconcealed pride of his "place near the forest," where his children grew so strong and healthy, he declared that the butcher's bills frightened him. To men of this sort, men who are willing to sow in the spring, and patient enough to wait for the ripening in the autumn, England owes most of her prosperity; but ordinary humanity may well be excused if it shrink from the idea of settling down in a spic-and-span new house in an unfinished neighbourhood.