invasions of German bands, partly perhaps because some pet parrots in
the oblong where I lived had learned to imitate cab-whistles; but
chiefly because of late there had seized me in London a quite
unreasonable longing for large woods and waste spaces, while the very
thought of little valleys underneath copses full of bracken and
foxgloves was a torment to me and every summer in London the longing
grew worse till the thing was becoming intolerable. So I took a stick
and a knapsack and began walking northwards, starting at Tetherington
and sleeping at inns, where one could get real salt, and the waiter
spoke English and where one had a name instead of a number; and though
the tablecloth might be dirty the windows opened so that the air was
clean, where one had the excellent company of farmers and men of the
wold, who could not be thoroughly vulgar, because they had not the
money to be so even if they had wished it. At first the novelty was
delightful, and then one day in a queer old inn up Uthering way,
beyond Lingwold, I heard for the first time the rumour of the city
said to be on Mallington Moor. They spoke of it quite casually over
their glasses of beer, two farmers at the inn. "They say the queer
folk be at Mallington with their city," one farmer said. "Travelling
they seem to be," said the other. And more came in then and the rumour
spread. And then, such are the contradictions of our little likes and
dislikes and all the whims that drive us, that I, who had come so far
to avoid cities, had a great longing all of a sudden for throngs again
and the great hives of Man, and then and there determined on that
bright Sunday morning to come to Mallington and there search for the
city that rumour spoke of so strangely.

Mallington Moor, from all that they said of it, was hardly a likely
place to find a thing by searching. It was a huge high moor, very
bleak and desolate and altogether trackless. It seemed a lonely place