too abundant hope. He did not go the length of admitting his
description false, but he told me drily that 'I had better see the
thing for myself.' An hour's journey found me on the Essex flats.
There was a bright sky and a brisk wind, but nothing could disguise the
featureless monotony of the far-stretched landscape. The train put me
down at a roadside station where a dogcart waited my arrival. I drove
through a small village of mean, red-brick houses, and soon found
myself in the open country. My driver made but one remark during the
four-mile journey.

'You be come to see Dawes' farm?' he said.

I admitted the fact.

'There's a-many has come,' he replied. 'You be the twenty-first I have
drove. An' they all be uncommon glad to get away agen.'

'Why?' I asked.

'You'll soon find out.'

With that he lit his pipe and smoked stolidly. I was not long in
comprehending the reason of his reticence. Dawes' farm may once have
been a comfortable residence, but when I saw it it was a mildewed,
rat-haunted ruin. It stood upon a piece of redeemed marsh-land, and
the salt damp of the marsh had eaten into its very vitals. The
wainscots were discoloured, the walls oozed, and part of the roof was
broken. There had once been a garden; that, like the rest, was a ruin.
The land was there no doubt, fifty acres said the advertisement, but it
was treeless, bleak, flat, covered with coarse grass, and cut up by