refuge. For it was a refuge--the alternative being to march along blindly till the next morning, which was, of course, equivalent to not being an alternative at all--but how bleak a one! Gray shadows were descending on it, cold winds were whirling round it, the grass was, naturally, dripping, and scattered in and out among the furze bushes were the empty sardine and other tins of happier sojourners. These last objects were explained by the presence of a hop-field skirting one side of the common, a hop-field luckily not yet in that state which attracts hop-pickers, or the common would hardly have been a place to which gentlemen care to take their wives. On the opposite side to the hop-field the ground fell away, and the tips of two hop-kilns peered at us over the edge. In front of us, concealed by the furze and other bushes of a prickly, clinging nature, lay the road, along which people going home to houses, as Edelgard put it, were constantly hurrying. All round, except on the hop-field side, we could see much farther than we wanted to across a cheerless stretch of country. The three caravans were drawn up in a row facing the watery sunset, because the wind chiefly came from the east (though it also came from all round) and the backs of the vans offered more resistance to its fury than any other side of them, there being only one small wooden window in that portion of them which, being kept carefully shut by us during the whole tour, would have been infinitely better away. I hope my hearers _see_ the caravans: if not it seems to me I read in vain. Square--or almost square--brown boxes on wheels, the door in front, with a big aperture at the side of it shut at night by a wooden shutter and affording a pleasant prospect (when there was one) by day, a much too good-sized window on each side, the bald back with no relief of any sort unless the larders can be regarded as such, for the little shutter window I have mentioned became invisible when shut, and inside an impression (I never use a word other than deliberately), an impression, then, I say, of snugness, produced by the green carpet, the green arras lining to the walls, the green eider-down quilts on the beds, the green portière dividing the main room from the small portion in front which we used as a dressing room, the flowered curtains, the row of gaily bound books on a shelf, and the polish of the brass candle brackets that seemed to hit me every time I moved. What became of this impression in the case of one reasonable man, too steady to be blown hither and thither by passing gusts of enthusiasm, perhaps the narrative will disclose.