So full was I of busy thoughts, and so desirous to put my plans in train without the loss of a moment, that although the tossing of apples had now resolved itself into a most irregular game of cricket--George Copley being batting at one wicket, with little Sam Roper for his mate at the other;--Sam, an urchin of seven years old, but the son of an old player, full of cricket blood, born, as it were, with a bat in his hand, getting double the notches of his tall partner--an indignity which that well-natured stripling bore with surprising good humour; and although the opposite side consisted of Susan Wheeler bowling at one end, her old competitor of the ragged jacket at the other, and one urchin in trousers, and one in petticoats, standing out; in spite of the temptation of watching this comical parody on that manly exercise, rendered doubly amusing by the scientific manner in which little Sam stood at his wicket, the perfect gravity of the fieldsman in petticoats, and the serious air with which these two worthies called Susan to order whenever she transgressed any rule of the game:--Sam will certainly be a great player some day or other, and so (if he be not a girl, for really there's no telling) will the young gentleman standing out. In spite, however, of the great temptation of overlooking a favourite divertisement, with variations so truly original, home we went, hardly pausing to observe the housing of Master Keep's wheat harvest. Home we went, adding at every step a fresh story to our Castle in the Air, anticipating happy mornings and joyous evenings at dear Hatherden;--in love with the place and all about it, and quite convinced that the hill was nothing, the distance nothing, and the walk by far the prettiest in the neighbourhood. Home we came, and there we found two letters: one from Mr. Camden, sent per coach, to say that he found they must go abroad immediately, and that they could not therefore think of coming into Berkshire for a year or more; one from the lawyer, left in charge of Hatherden, to say, that we could not have the place, as the Norrises were returning to their old house forthwith. And my Castle is knocked down, blown up--which is the right word for the demolishing such airy edifices? And Hatherden is as far-off, and the hill as steep, and the common as dreary as ever.