I hardly like to say it, but I verily believe my guest had been drinking heavily, and that he was suffering from _delirium tremens_, or, as it is commonly called for conciseness, “the blues”; anyway, when he left the caravan he was mumbling to himself, casting furtive glances to right and left, and gesticulating very much as he walked down the road. I am afraid I did the poor man a great wrong in giving him so much raw spirit; but then I console myself with the knowledge that I was only indirectly to blame, having merely placed the decanter upon the table, as I would for any other visitor, and expressed a wish that he would help himself; with which suggestion he complied by diminishing my spirit store more rapidly than I had intended. The following day I sent him a pamphlet upon temperance, as a set-off against my ill-timed hospitality, and trust that he read it with profit. My guest was such a confirmed believer in spirits that he would have made a capital medium for any professional spiritualist. He was familiar with almost every spirit nameable, and had been at one time or other possessed of them all, knowing where to find both the best and the worst of them. V. INTRODUCTION TO “BARBE ROUGE.” The gentleman to whom I am indebted for the story of the old pirate, “Barbe Rouge,” is now a well-known artist and author, and as I knew him to be the hero of several adventures, I was anxious to obtain a story from him. Having gained an introduction to him, I put myself in his way when passing through Norwich. After a long chat, he expressed a wish to inspect my caravan, which I had left at Thorpe, the prettiest village in Norfolk, so we strolled down to it together. Being of a roving and adventurous disposition, he showed great delight at my house on wheels and its comfortable internal arrangements, and having friends at Lynn whom he wished to visit, he begged to be allowed to accompany me on my journey as far as the borders of the county. I readily acquiesced, and found him such a companionable fellow, that our roundabout journey to Lynn--distant some fifty miles by the nearest road from Norwich--actually took us _three weeks_ to accomplish. My comrade was delighted with the gipsy life, and but that his leisure time was at an end, he would have accompanied me further on my progress through the fens of Lincolnshire. We met with several adventures while we were together, one of which I must relate.