seemed) for ruffs or wild duck. I was a hardy boy, much older
than my years, like so many only children. I used to go away,
sometimes, for two or three days together, with my friend John
Halmer, Captain Halmer's son, taking some bread, with a blanket
or two, as my ship's stores. We used to paddle far up the Waveney
to an island hidden in reeds. We were the only persons who knew
of that island. We were like little kings there. We built a rough
sort of tent-hut there every summer. Then we would pass the time
there deliciously, now bathing, now fishing, but always living on
what we caught. John, who was a wild lad, much older than I, used
to go among the gipsies in their great winter camp at Oulton. He
learned many strange tricks from them. He was a good
camp-companion. I think that the last two years of my life at
Oulton were the happiest years of my life. I have never cared for
dry or hilly countries since. Wherever I have been in the world,
I have always longed for the Broads, where the rivers wander
among reeds for miles, losing themselves in thickets of reeds. I
have always thought tenderly of the flat land, where windmills or
churches are the only landmarks, standing up above the mist, in
the loneliness of the fens. But when I was nearly thirteen years
old (just after the death of Charles the Second) my father died,
leaving me an orphan. My uncle, Gabriel Hyde, a man about town,
was my only relative. The vicar of Lowestoft wrote to him, on my
behalf. A fortnight later (the ways were always very foul in the
winter) my uncle's man came to fetch me to London. There was a
sale of my father's furniture. His books were sent off to his
college at Cambridge by the Lowestoft carrier. Then the valet
took me by wherry to Norwich, where we caught a weekly coach to
town. That was the last time I ever sailed on the Waveney as a
boy, that journey to Norwich. When I next saw the Broads, I was a