came where a high
wall joining some water, formed a boundary. The water was a brook
from the mountain, here widened and deepened into a still pool. He
had been once out of his depth before: he threw himself in, and swam
straight across: ever after that, swimming seemed to him as natural
as walking.

Then first awoke a faint sense of safety; for on the other side he
was knee deep in heather. He was on the wild hill, with miles on
miles of cover! Here the unman could not catch him. It must be the
same that Donal pointed out to him one day at a distance; he had a
gun, and Donal said he had once shot a poacher and killed him. He
did not know what a poacher was: perhaps he was one himself, and the
man would shoot him. They could see him quite well from the other
side! he must cross the knoll first, and then he might lie down and
rest. He would get right into the heather, and lie with it all
around and over him till the night came. Where he would go then, he
did not know. But it was all one; he could go anywhere. Donal must
mind his cows, and the men must mind the horses, and Mistress Jean
must mind her kitchen, but Sir Gibbie could go where he pleased. He
would go up Daurside; but he would not go just at once; that man
might be on the outlook for him, and he wouldn't like to be shot.
People who were shot lay still, and were put into holes in the
earth, and covered up, and he would not like that.

Thus he communed with himself as he went over the knoll. On the
other side he chose a tall patch of heather, and crept under. How
nice and warm and kind the heather felt, though it did hurt the
weals dreadfully sometimes. If he only had something to cover just
them! There seemed to be one down his back as well as round his
waist!

And now Sir Gibbie, though not much poorer than he had been, really
possessed nothing separable, except his hair and his nails--nothing
therefore that he could call his, as distinguished from him. His
sole other possession was a negative quantity--his hunger, namely,
for he had not even a meal in his body: he had eaten nothing since
the preceding noon. I am wrong--he had one possession besides,
though hardly a separable one--a ballad about a fair lady and her
page, which Donal had taught him. That he now began to repeat to
himself, but was disappointed to find it a good deal withered. He
was not nearly reduced to extremity yet though--this little heir of
the world: in his bo