Chapter 12 At the Farm 
N John Smith’s young days the site of 
Aldershot town and camp “ was one of the 
wildest of all our heaths. . . . But it’s wilder 
now,” he added, with disapproval. There 
was a “hamlet” (he chose that word, as more 
exact than “village”’), and perhaps there were 
as many as half a dozen farms. And he knew, 
either personally or from his father’s talk, every 
soul who lived in Aldershot. So too of Cam- 
berley. Where now are the villas were deep 
fir woods; and it was he himself, with his father’s 
horses, who carted the greater part of the woods 
away. As for that stretch—the Mytchett road 
and between the two North Camp stations— 
it was a marsh; and he had seen Will-o’-the- 
Wisps where now, at night, gas-lamps glimmer 
across the still rush-grown pastures. 
There used to be an old woman at Camberley 
so confused in her memory that, although she 
knew him for John Smith, she mistook him 
for a dead uncle of his, and he had to talk to her 
in that character. 
These reminiscences oozed from him amidst 
shrewd talk of more modern affairs. We walked 
along the road together—he in his shirt-sleeves, 
for it was a May evening, a Friday. He stopped 
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