enabled to put down his donkey and barrow, and set up a cart and a mare—no fashionable gypsy-cart, a sort of house-boat on wheels, but a light and serviceable cart, with a moveable tilt, constructed on his own designs. This allowed him to take along with him a few canvases and other artists' materials; soda-water, whisky, and such-like necessaries; and even to ask a friend from town for a day or two, if he wanted to.
He was in this state of comparative luxury when at last, by the merest accident, I forgathered with him once more. I had pulled up to Streatly one afternoon, and, leaving my boat, had gone for a long ramble on the glorious North Berkshire Downs to stretch my legs before dinner. Somewhere over on Cuckhamsley Hill, by the side of the Ridgeway, remote from the habitable world, I found him, smoking his vesper pipe on the shaft of his cart, the mare cropping the short grass beside him. He greeted me without surprise or effusion, as if we had only parted yesterday, and without a hint of an allusion to past times, but drifted quietly into rambling talk of his last three years, and, without ever telling his story right out, left a strange picturesque impression
