The difficulty was that I had overlooked the fact that everybody goes
out of London town at Whitsuntide. Village and county town I tried and
I could not find where to lay my head. Everything was, as they say in
England, "full up." It was coming on to rain and the night fell chill
and black. Would I have to use my rucksack for a pillow and sleep in
the fields?

At length I found a man--it was at quaint Godalming, I think, where the
famous Charterhouse School is--who could not give me a room, but
offered me a bed and breakfast at half a crown. "There's another
fellow up there," he said. "But he's a nice, quiet fellow; something
like yourself," he said. "I think you'll like him."

"You are an American," remarked my landlord. I sat with him in his
little parlour behind the bar. It had a gun over the mantelpiece, a
great deal of painted china and a group of stuffed birds in a glass
case. He asked me if I liked reading, because, if I did, he had an old
dictionary to which I was welcome at any time.

At length it was the hour for bed. I followed my heavy host with his
candle up difficult stairs. "I think they're all asleep," he said.

"They're all asleep!" I exclaimed. "Who are?"

"Why," replied my landlord, "there are five of them, you know. But
they are nice quiet fellows. Something like yourself," he added. "I
think you will like them."

In that shadowed, gabled room were the noises of many sunk in slumber.
Well, they were, I found in the morning, rather inoffensive young