"At one period of i one period of its reverses the House fell into the occupation of a Showman. He was found registered as its occupier on the parish books of the time when he rented the House and there was therefore no need of any clue to his name. But he himself was less easy to be found; for he had led a wandering life and settled people had lost sight of him and people who plumed themselves on being respectable were shy of admitting that they had ever known anything of him. At last among the marsh lands near the river's level that lie about Deptford and the neighbouring market-gardens a Grizzled Personage in velveteen with a face so cut up by varieties of weather that he looked as if he had been tattooed was found smoking a pipe at the door of a wooden Thhouse on wheels. The wooden house was laid up in ordinary for the winter near the mouth of a muddy creek; and everything near it the foggy river the misty marshes and the steaming market-gardens smoked in company with the grizzled man."