The Passion for Life
"I want to wash, Simpson," I said, when he had nearly completed his work. "Besides, it has struck me that there is no such thing as a bathroom in the house. What are we going to do?"

"This way, sir," said Simpson, and I followed him out of the house towards what I call the cliff end of the building. Here I found, gurgling out of the hillside, a stream of the purest water I had ever seen, which flowed into a pond.

The idea of outdoor ablutions appealed to me, and I almost forgot my ailments as I bathed my hands and face in the pure spring water. A few minutes later, I was eating the sweetest ham I had ever tasted.

"If this is the result of the old-fashioned way of feeding pigs," I remarked to Simpson, "I shall make a closer acquaintance with Mrs. Martha Bray, and shall buy all the hams she can dispose of."

The time was spring. To be exact, it was the 14th of May, and although the evening air was somewhat chilly, the days had become long, and I remembered standing a long time at the front of my little wooden hut, looking at the giant cliffs at whose feet the waves of the broad Atlantic rolled. When I had returned to the house, Simpson had lit a lamp, while in the grate a wood fire burnt cheerfully.

"Do you think it will do, sir?" asked Simpson.

"Do!" I replied; "it's just perfect."

"Then, sir, if you don't mind, I will go to bed. I am a little tired, sir. There's nothing more I can do for you, is there?"

"Nothing, thank you, Simpson. Good-night."

A few minutes later I judged, from the silence which prevailed in the kitchen, that Simpson had retired, and that I was practically alone in the little wooden hut.

I was still in utter ignorance of my whereabouts, beyond the fact that I was somewhere in Cornwall on the edge of a cliff, and close to a little village called St. Issey. Where St. Issey was situated I did not know. Cornwall, I reflected, was a county nearly a hundred miles long, with the main portion of it surrounded by the sea. I knew that I must be somewhere in the vicinity of the main line of the Great Western Railway, as I did not remember changing anywhere, but beyond that I 
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