ne. The windows are
close to each other on the east side: a porch runs all round the house,
and the roof hangs far over. It is a straw roof, which has grown gray
with age, and makes the house warmer than the finest castle. If you
ever can, you must go there some day, just to see where your Nat was
raised. Our fields reach far up the hill and away down to the Treisam,
and we had two hundred acres of woodland,--enough to cut ten thousand
florins' worth of wood every year. It was glorious. Wherever you look,
it's all your own, and all in apple-pie order. We were three children.
I was the oldest, and I had a brother and a sister. In those parts,
when the father dies or gives up farming, the farm isn't divided, but
the eldest son takes it all, and the father makes an estimate how much
money he ought to pay his brothers and sisters. If one of the children
is dissatisfied and goes to law, the Government divides the farm. But
such a thing was never done except once or twice, and never turned out
well. Four hundred yards from our house, on a little patch of field, a
widow had a lonely cabin, and lived there with her only daughter. They
were the third generation of the descendants of younger children, and
poor, very poor, but good as angels,--or, at least, I thought so. The
mother was one of those lean, lank women that can always be pleasant
and agreeable: as for Lizzie,--no, there wasn't a false vein about her;
I will say that to my dying day. They supported themselves by making
straw hats; for over there, on the other side of the mountain, in the
Glotter Valley, the women-folks wear round, yellow straw hats, just as
the gentlemen do in the cities, and the men wear black straw hats. A
hat made by Lizzie of the Wind-Corner always sold for three groats more
than another; and if a girl was ever so ugly and put one of her hats on
it made her pretty. Lizzie had hands as delicate and smooth as a
saint's; and yet she could work hard enough in the fields, too. When
she sat at the window sewing, I often used to stand outside and watch
her, and if she stuck her finger it seemed to go through all my bones.
My father soon saw how matters stood between me and Lizzie, and would
not hear of it; but I would sooner have died than live without Lizzie:
so my father sent me away to the saw-mill. The saw-mill doesn't belong
to our inheritance, but my father bought it. There I stayed; and
through the week I never cast eyes on a living creature except t