and berries, and lying for hours asleep beneath the shadows of
their branching trees. He was one of the few children into whose
mind Amos failed to find an inlet for the catechism; and once,
during the past summer, he had blown his wickin-whistle in
Sunday-school class, and been reprimanded by the superintendent
because he gathered blackberries during the sacred hours.

A few days previous to his disappearance in the snow he had heard
the legend of Jenny Greenteeth, the haunting fairy of the Green
Fold Clough, and how that she, who in the summer-time made the
flowers grow and the birds sing, hid herself in winter on a shelf
of rock above the Gin Spa Well, a lone streamlet that gurgled from
out the rocky sides of the gorge. The story laid hold of his young
mind, and under the glow of his imagination assumed the
proportions of an Arabian Nights' wonder. He dreamed of it by
night, and during the day received thrashings not a few from his
zealous schoolmaster, because his thoughts were away from his
lessons with Jenny Greenteeth in her Green Fold Clough retreat. On
this, the afternoon of the first snowfall of the autumn, there
being a half-holiday, the boy determined once more to explore the
haunts of the fairy; and just as Mr. Penrose turned out of his
lodgings to kill the prose of his life, which he felt to be
killing him, Oliver o' Deaf Martha's little boy turned out of his
father's hovel to feed the poetry that was stirring in his
youthful soul. The north wind blew through the rents and seams of
his threadbare clothing; but its chill was not felt, so warm with
excitement beat his little heart. And when the first flakes fell,
he clapped his hands in wild delight, and sang of the plucking of
geese by hardy Scotchmen, and the sending of their feathers across
the intervening leagues.

Poor little fellow! His was a hard lot when looked at from where
Plenty spread her table and friends were manifold. But he was not
without his compensations. His home was the moors, and his parent
was Nature. He knew how to leap a brook, and snare a bird, and
climb a tree, and shape a boat, and cut a wickin-whistle, and many
a time and oft, when bread was scarce, he fed on the berries that
only asked to be plucked, and grew so plentifully along the sides
of the great hills.

The dusk was falling, and the snow beginning to lie thick, as
he entered the dark gorge of the Clough; but to him darkness
and light were alike, and as for the snow,