In the morning all the Exmoor hills, the thought of which had frightened me at the end of each day’s travel, seemed no more than bushels to me, as I looked forth the bedroom window, and thanked God for the sight of them.  And even so, I had not to climb them, at least by my own labour.  For my most worthy uncle (as we oft call a parent’s cousin), finding it impossible to keep me for the day, and owning indeed that I was right in hastening to my mother, vowed that walk I should not, even though he lost his Saturday hides from Minehead and from Watchett.  Accordingly he sent me forth on the very strongest nag he had, and the maidens came to wish me God-speed, and kissed their hands at the doorway.  It made me proud and glad to think that after seeing so much of the world, and having held my own with it, I was come once more among my own people, and found them kinder, and more warm-hearted, ay and better looking too, than almost any I had happened upon in the mighty city of London.

But how shall I tell you the things I felt, and the swelling of my heart within me, as I drew nearer, and more near, to the place of all I loved and owned, to the haunt of every warm remembrance, the nest of all the fledgling hopes—­in a word, to home?  The first sheep I beheld on the moor with a great red J.R. on his side (for mother would have them marked with my name, instead of her own as they should have been), I do assure you my spirit leaped, and all my sight came to my eyes.  I shouted out, “Jem, boy!”—­for that was his name, and a rare hand he was at fighting—­and he knew me in spite of the stranger horse; and I leaned over and stroked his head, and swore he should never be mutton.  And when I was passed he set off at full gallop, to call the rest of the J.R.’s together, and tell them young master was come home at last.

[Illustration:  223.jpg Home at last]

But bless your heart, and my own as well, it would take me all the afternoon to lay before you one-tenth of the things which came home to me in that one half-hour, as the sun was sinking, in the real way he ought to sink.  I touched my horse with no spur nor whip, feeling that my slow wits would go, if the sights came too fast over them.  Here was the pool where we washed the sheep, and there was the hollow that oozed away, where I had shot three wild ducks.  Here was the peat-rick that hid my dinner, when I could not go home for it, and there was the bush with the thyme growing round it, where Annie had found a great swarm of our bees.  And now was the corner of the dry stone wall, where the moor gave over in earnest, and the partridges whisked from it into the corn lands, and called that their supper was ready, and looked at our house and the ricks as they ran, and would wait for that comfort till winter.

And there I saw—­but let me go—­Annie was too much for me.  She nearly pulled me off my horse, and kissed the very mouth of the carbine.

“I knew you would come.  Oh John!  Oh John!  I have waited here every Saturday night; and I saw you for the last mile or more, but I would not come round the corner, for fear that I should cry, John, and then not cry when I got you.  Now I may cry as much as I like, and you need not try to stop me, John, because I am so happy.  But you mustn’t cry yourself, John; what will mother think of you?  She will be so jealous of me.”