THE HOME FROM HOME 79

described the operation in detail. That was how he
would speak, gruffly and disconsolately, beating his
chest. He had a grudge against God. "There He
is/' he said to me, "up there. We think a lot about
Him, but He doesn't think about us. He thinks about
Himself. But we'll be up there one day and we won't
let Him stay."

He had an extraordinary vitality. There was a
time when five men could not hold him, and once
when two policemen tried to arrest him at Evesham
for begging, he flung them both over a hedge. He
walked several times a week into Evesham; it was
eight miles each way by road, but he didn't go by
road. He knew every gap in every hedge for miles
around, and once two men camping in a field above
Broadway woke up to see his face in the tent-opening.
"Naughty," he said and disappeared.

He had banked several hundred pounds which he
never touched. The only work he ever did, after
his reason went, was cattle-droving. He begged, if
that word can be applied to his friendly demands,
"Now, what about potatoes? Or a cabbage? Well
then, turnips? What have you done with all that
dough you had yesterday?" I never saw him in a
shop, but on Friday mornings he toured the dust-
bins in the long High Street, turning over their
contents in a critical unembarrassed way like
a lady handling silk remnants on a bargain
counter.

His cottage in Broad Campden had two rooms with
one broken chair and a pile of straw in the corner
and sixteen pairs of old shoes. He stopped a sweep
in the village once and asked him to clean his