Tom Tiddlers Ground | Page 5

who must know if they would.
He was represented as being all the ages between five-and-twenty and
sixty, and as having been a hermit seven years, twelve, twenty,
thirty,--though twenty, on the whole, appeared the favourite term.
"Well, well!" said Mr. Traveller. "At any rate, let us see what a real live
Hermit looks like."
So, Mr. Traveller went on, and on, and on, until he came to Tom
Tiddler's Ground.
It was a nook in a rustic by-road, which the genius of Mopes had laid
waste as completely, as if he had been born an Emperor and a
Conqueror. Its centre object was a dwelling-house, sufficiently
substantial, all the window-glass of which had been long ago abolished
by the surprising genius of Mopes, and all the windows of which were
barred across with rough-split logs of trees nailed over them on the
outside. A rickyard, hip-high in vegetable rankness and ruin, contained
outbuildings from which the thatch had lightly fluttered away, on all
the winds of all the seasons of the year, and from which the planks and
beams had heavily dropped and rotted. The frosts and damps of winter,
and the heats of summer, had warped what wreck remained, so that not

a post or a board retained the position it was meant to hold, but
everything was twisted from its purpose, like its owner, and degraded
and debased. In this homestead of the sluggard, behind the ruined
hedge, and sinking away among the ruined grass and the nettles, were
the last perishing fragments of certain ricks: which had gradually
mildewed and collapsed, until they looked like mounds of rotten
honeycomb, or dirty sponge. Tom Tiddler's ground could even show its
ruined water; for, there was a slimy pond into which a tree or two had
fallen--one soppy trunk and branches lay across it then--which in its
accumulation of stagnant weed, and in its black decomposition, and in
all its foulness and filth, was almost comforting, regarded as the only
water that could have reflected the shameful place without seeming
polluted by that low office.
Mr. Traveller looked all around him on Tom Tiddler's ground, and his
glance at last encountered a dusky Tinker lying among the weeds and
rank grass, in the shade of the dwelling-house. A rough walking- staff
lay on the ground by his side, and his head rested on a small wallet. He
met Mr. Traveller's eye without lifting up his head, merely depressing
his chin a little (for he was lying on his back) to get a better view of
him.
"Good day!" said Mr. Traveller.
"Same to you, if you like it," returned the Tinker.
"Don't YOU like it? It's a very fine day."
"I ain't partickler in weather," returned the Tinker, with a yawn.
Mr. Traveller had walked up to where he lay, and was looking down at
him. "This is a curious place," said Mr. Traveller.
"Ay, I suppose so!" returned the Tinker. "Tom Tiddler's ground, they
call this."
"Are you well acquainted with it?"
"Never saw it afore to-day," said the Tinker, with another yawn, "and
don't care if I never see it again. There was a man here just now, told
me what it was called. If you want to see Tom himself, you must go in
at that gate." He faintly indicated with his chin a little mean ruin of a
wooden gate at the side of the house.
"Have you seen Tom?"
"No, and I ain't partickler to see him. I can see a dirty man anywhere."
"He does not live in the house, then?" said Mr. Traveller, casting his

eyes upon the house anew.
"The man said," returned the Tinker, rather irritably,--"him as was here
just now, 'this what you're a laying on, mate, is Tom Tiddler's ground.
And if you want to see Tom,' he says, 'you must go in at that gate.' The
man come out at that gate himself, and he ought to know."
"Certainly," said Mr. Traveller.
"Though, perhaps," exclaimed the Tinker, so struck by the brightness of
his own idea, that it had the electric effect upon him of causing him to
lift up his head an inch or so, "perhaps he was a liar! He told some rum
'uns--him as was here just now, did about this place of Tom's. He
says--him as was here just now--'When Tom shut up the house, mate, to
go to rack, the beds was left, all made, like as if somebody was a-going
to sleep in every bed. And if you was to walk through the bedrooms
now, you'd see the ragged mouldy bedclothes a heaving and a heaving
like seas. And a heaving and a heaving with what?' he says. 'Why, with
the rats under 'em.'"
"I wish I had seen that man," Mr.