ver thought of _her_
being old. She was our refuge in all time of trouble and necessity. It
was she who gave us something to eat as often and as much as we
wanted. She used to say it was no cheating of the minister to feed
the minister's boys.

And then her stories! There was nothing like them in all that
countryside. It was rather a dreary country in outward aspect, having
many bleak moorland hills, that lay about like slow-stiffened waves,
of no great height but of much desolation; and as far as the
imagination was concerned, it would seem that the minds of former
generations had been as bleak as the country, they had left such small
store of legends of any sort. But Kirsty had come from a region where
the hills were hills indeed--hills with mighty skeletons of stone
inside them; hills that looked as if they had been heaped over huge
monsters which were ever trying to get up--a country where every
cliff, and rock, and well had its story--and Kirsty's head was full of
such. It was delight indeed to sit by her fire and listen to them.
That would be after the men had had their supper, early of a winter
night, and had gone, two of them to the village, and the other to
attend to the horses. Then we and the herd, as we called the boy who
attended to the cattle, whose work was over for the night, would sit
by the fire, and Kirsty would tell us stories, and we were in our
heaven.

CHAPTER V

I Begin Life

I began life, and that after no pleasant fashion, as near as I can
guess, about the age of six years. One glorious morning in early
summer I found myself led by the ungentle hand of Mrs. Mitchell
towards a little school on the outside of the village, kept by an old
woman called Mrs. Shand. In an English village I think she would have
been called Dame Shand: we called her Luckie Shand. Half dragged along
the road by Mrs. Mitchell, from whose rough grasp I attempted in vain
to extricate my hand, I looked around at the shining fields and up at
the blue sky, where a lark was singing as if he had just found out
that he could sing, with something like the despair of a man going to
the gallows and bidding farewell to the world. We had to cross a
little stream, and when we reached the middle of the foot-bridge, I
tugged yet again at my imprisoned hand, with a half-formed intention
of throwing myself into the brook. But my efforts were still
unavailing. Over a half-mile or so, rendered weary by unwillingness,
I was led