and rarely in my life have been happier than there, dining and supping with John and Martha and the farm-labourers, expecting my father across the hills, and yet satisfied with the sun.  To hope, and not be impatient, is really to believe, and this was my feeling in my father’s absence.  I knew he would come, without wishing to hurry him.  He had the world beyond the hills; I this one, where a slow full river flowed from the sounding mill under our garden wall, through long meadows.  In Winter the wild ducks made letters of the alphabet flying.  On the other side of the copses bounding our home, there was a park containing trees old as the History of England, John Thresher said, and the thought of their venerable age enclosed me comfortably.  He could not tell me whether he meant as old as the book of English History; he fancied he did, for the furrow-track follows the plough close upon; but no one exactly could swear when that (the book) was put together.  At my suggestion, he fixed the trees to the date of the Heptarchy, a period of heavy ploughing.  Thus begirt by Saxon times, I regarded Riversley as a place of extreme baldness, a Greenland, untrodden by my Alfred and my Harold.  These heroes lived in the circle of Dipwell, confidently awaiting the arrival of my father.  He sent me once a glorious letter.  Mrs. Waddy took one of John Thresher’s pigeons to London, and in the evening we beheld the bird cut the sky like an arrow, bringing round his neck a letter warm from him I loved.  Planet communicating with planet would be not more wonderful to men than words of his to me, travelling in such a manner.  I went to sleep, and awoke imagining the bird bursting out of heaven.

Meanwhile there was an attempt to set me moving again.  A strange young man was noticed in the neighbourhood of the farm, and he accosted me at Leckham fair.  ’I say, don’t we know one another?  How about your grandfather the squire, and your aunt, and Mr. Bannerbridge?  I’ve got news for you.’

Not unwilling to hear him, I took his hand, leaving my companion, the miller’s little girl, Mabel Sweetwinter, at a toy-stand, while Bob, her brother and our guardian, was shying sticks in a fine attitude.  ’Yes, and your father, too,’ said the young man; ’come along and see him; you can run?’ I showed him how fast.  We were pursued by Bob, who fought for me, and won me, and my allegiance instantly returned to him.  He carried me almost the whole of the way back to Dipwell.  Women must feel for the lucky heroes who win them, something of what I felt for mine; I kissed his bloody face, refusing to let him wipe it.  John Thresher said to me at night, ’Ay, now you’ve got a notion of boxing; and will you believe it, Master Harry, there’s people fools enough to want to tread that ther’ first-rate pastime under foot?  I speak truth, and my word for ’t, they’d better go in petticoats.  Let clergymen preach as in duty bound; you and I’ll uphold a manful sport, we will, and a cheer for Bob!’