ere by the melting of snow in
the winter and the rain of thunderstorms in summer. Down every glen flows
a noisy mountain stream, dashing along its rocky course with so many tiny
waterfalls and impatient splashes, that the gurgling and bubbling of
brooks come up even into the quietness of the tableland and mingle with
the singing of the birds and the humming of the bees among the heather.
There are not many paths across the hills, except the narrow sheep-walks
worn by the tiny feet of the sheep as they follow one another in long,
single lines, winding in and out through the clumps of gorse; and few
people care to explore the solitary plains, except the shepherds who have
the charge of the flocks, and tribes of village children who go up every
summer to gather the fruit of the wild and hardy bilberry wires.

The whole of this broad tableland, as well as the hills, are common
pasture for the inhabitants of the valleys, who have an equal right to
keep sheep and ponies on the uplands with the lord of the manor. But the
property of the soil belongs to the latter, and he only has the power of
enclosing the waste so as to make fields and plant woods upon it,
provided always that he leaves a sufficient portion for the use of the
villagers. In times gone by, however, when the lord of the manor and his
agent were not very watchful, it was the practice of poor persons, who
did not care how uncomfortably they lived, to seek out some distant
hollow, or the farthest and most hidden side of a hillock, and there
build themselves such a low, small hut, as should escape the notice of
any passer-by, should they chance to go that way. Little by little,
making low fences which looked like the surrounding gorse bushes, they
enclosed small portions of the waste land, or, as it is called,
encroached upon the common; and if they were able to keep their
encroachment without having their hedges broken down, or if the lord of
the manor neglected to demand rent for it for the space of twenty years,
their fields and gardens became securely and legally their own. Because
of this right, therefore, are to be found here and there little farms of
three or four fields a-piece, looking like islands, with the wide, open
common around them; and some miles away over the breezy uplands there is
even a little hamlet of these poor cottages, all belonging to the people
who dwell in them.

Many years ago, even many years before my story begins, a poor woman--who
w