ark pathway, extending from the stable to the far end of the garden,
and called the 'witches' walk' from a game we used to play in it....
Even out of the 'witches' walk' you saw the Manse facing toward you,
with its back to the river and the wooded bank, and the bright
flower-plots and stretches of comfortable vegetables in front and on
each side of it; flower plots and vegetable borders, by the way, on
which it was almost death to set foot, and about which we held a curious
belief,--namely, that my grandfather went round and measured any
footprints that he saw, to compare the measurement at night with the
boots put out for brushing; to avoid which we were accustomed, by a
strategic movement of the foot to make the mark longer....

"So much for the garden; now follow me into the house. On entering the
door you had before you a stone paved lobby.... There stood a case of
foreign birds, two or three marble deities from India and a lily of the
Nile in a pot, and at the far end the stairs shut in the view. With how
many games of 'tig' or brick-building in the forenoon is the long low
dining room connected in my mind! The storeroom was a most voluptuous
place, with its piles of biscuit boxes and spice tins, the rack for
buttered eggs, the little window that let in the sunshine and the
flickering shadows of leaves, and the strong sweet odor of everything
that pleaseth the taste of men....

"Opposite the study was the parlor, a small room crammed full of
furniture and covered with portraits, with a cabinet at the side full of
foreign curiosities, and a sort of anatomical trophy on the top. During
a grand cleaning of the apartment I remember all the furniture was
ranged on a circular grass plot between the churchyard and the house. It
was a lovely still summer evening, and I stayed out, climbing among the
chairs and sofas. Falling on a large bone or skull, I asked what it was.
Part of an albatross, auntie told me. 'What is an albatross?' I asked,
and then she described to me this great bird nearly as big as a house,
that you saw out miles away from any land, sleeping above the vast and
desolate ocean. She told me that the _Ancient Mariner_ was all about
one; and quoted with great _verve_ (she had a duster in her hand, I
recollect)--

'With my crossbow
I shot the albatross.'

... Willie had a crossbow, but up to this date I had never envied him
its possession. After this, however, it became one of the objects of my
life.