cart tracks, rarely with a hedge on both sides, between it and the cultivated land. It gave a sense of privacy and freedom combined. At a cottage, one of two that had once been a single farm, and still had a thatched shed and a weedy yard, I knocked to ask for water. [Illustration: Approaching Royston.] A huge wheel and windlass and a seven-gallon tub stood above a well in the yard. A wild-looking cat bounded through the window of one of the cottages which seemed to be empty. The other might also have been empty, in spite of its dirty muslin curtain, for I knocked long and no one came. Just as I was turning to get water for myself a human being with black hair and wild eyes looked out of an upper window and hailed me with a kind of scream. As she was not half dressed, I told her to leave me to look after myself. The well seemed bottomless, but I had the seven gallons of dark, bright water up on the edge by the time my hostess appeared with a dirty cup. She was a thin, hawk-faced woman, bare and brown to the breast, and with glittering blue eyes, and in her upper jaw three strong teeth. She was dressed in black rags. She shaded her eyes to look at me, as if I were half a mile away. “You’re thin, boy,” she said, “like me.” “Yes.” A pause. “Are you middling well off?” “Yes, middling. Are you?” “Oh, middling; but times are hard.” “They are.” She looked extraordinarily sad, and I said:-- “Still, we shall have a few years to wait for the workhouse.” “Have to wait a few years!” she repeated, very serious, though smiling. “Have you come from Royston?” “No; Newmarket.” “Newmarket. Are you going far?” “To Odsey, between Royston and Baldock.” “It’s a long way. You’re thin, boy.” “Food doesn’t nourish me. Men cannot live on bread only, not even brown bread made at home.” “No.” “Now in the moon, perhaps, I should get fat.” “Perhaps indeed, and I too. But look at the moon. You give me the horrors. You couldn’t live _there_.” It was a thin three-quarters of a circle in a hot sky. “But,” I said, “I should like to try.” “Would you?” “Yes, provided I were someone different. For, as for me, this is no doubt the best of all possible worlds.” “Better than the moon?” “Yes, better than the moon; and there is nothing better in it than your well water, missus. Good afternoon.” Framed clearly against her solitary pink-washed cottage, she stared after me, shading her eyes.