Thus, one way and another, food came to Gibbie. Drink was to be had
in almost any hollow. Sleep was scattered everywhere over the
world. For warmth, only motion and a seasoned skin were necessary:
the latter Gibbie had; the former, already a habit learned in the
streets, had now become almost a passion.

CHAPTER X.

THE BARN.

By this time Gibbie had got well up towards the roots of the hills
of Gormgarnet, and the river had dwindled greatly. He was no longer
afraid of it, but would lie for hours listening to its murmurs over
its pebbly bed, and sometimes even sleep in the hollows of its
banks, or below the willows that overhung it. Every here and there,
a brown rivulet from some peat-bog on a hill--brown and clear, like
smoke-crystals molten together, flowed into it, and when he had lost
it, guided him back to his guide. Farm after farm he passed, here
one widely bordering a valley stream, there another stretching its
skirts up the hillsides till they were lost in mere heather, where
the sheep wandered about, cropping what stray grass-blades and other
eatables they could find. Lower down he had passed through small
towns and large villages: here farms and cottages, with an
occasional country-seat and little village of low thatched houses,
made up the abodes of men. By this time he had become greatly
reconciled to the loneliness of Nature, and no more was afraid in
her solitary presence.

At the same time his heart had begun to ache and long after the
communion of his kind. For not once since he set out--and that
seemed months where it was only weeks, had he had an opportunity of
doing anything for anybody--except, indeed, unfastening the dog's
collar; and not to be able to help was to Gibbie like being dead.
Everybody, down to the dogs, had been doing for him, and what was
to become of him! It was a state altogether of servitude into which
he had fallen.

May had now set in, but up here among the hills she was May by
courtesy only: or if she was May, she would never be Might. She
was, indeed, only April, with her showers and sunshine, her tearful,
childish laughter, and again the frown, and the despair
irremediable. Nay, as if she still kept up a secret correspondence
with her cousin March, banished for his rudeness, she would not very
seldom shake from her skirts a snow storm, and oftener the dancing
hail. Then out would come the sun behind her, and laugh, and
say--"I could not help that;