He remained therefore in London, where he
made the barest livelihood by copying legal documents. In this way he
spent a few miserable years, and then suddenly set out to walk to the
house of his fathers. He had but five shillings in his possession when
the impulse came upon him.
He reached the moor, and had fallen exhausted, when a solitary gypsy,
rare phenomenon, I presume, with a divine spot awake in his heart, found
him, gave him some gin, and took him to a hut he had in the wildest part
of the heath. He lay helpless for a week, and then began to recover. When
he was sufficiently restored, he helped his host to weave the baskets
which, as soon as he had enough to make a load, he took about the country
in a cart. He soon became so clever at the work as quite to earn his food
and shelter, making more baskets while the gypsy was away selling the
others. At home, the old horse managed to live, or rather not to die, on
the moor, and, all things considered, had not a very hard life of it. On
his back, uncle Edmund, ill able to walk so far--for he was anything but
strong now, would sometimes go wandering in the twilight, or when the
moon shone, to some spot whence he could see his old home. Occasionally
he would even go round and round the house while we slept, like a ghost
dreaming of ancient days.
"But," I said, interrupting his narrative, "the horseman I saw that night
in the storm could not have been you, uncle; for the horse was a grand
creature, rearing like the horse with Peter the Great on his back, in the
corner of the map of Russia!"
"Were _you_ out that terrible night?" he returned.
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