with
the hissing of the bright round bullets, cast into the water, and the
spluttering of the great red apples which Annie was roasting for me. We
always managed our evening's work in the chimney of the back-kitchen,
where there was room to set chairs and table, in spite of the fire
burning. On the right-hand side was a mighty oven, where Betty
threatened to bake us; and on the left, long sides of bacon, made of
favoured pigs, and growing very brown and comely. Annie knew the names
of all, and ran up through the wood-smoke, every now and then, when a
gentle memory moved her, and asked them how they were getting on, and
when they would like to be eaten. Then she came back with foolish tears,
at thinking of that necessity; and I, being soft in a different way,
would make up my mind against bacon.

But, Lord bless you! it was no good. Whenever it came to breakfast-time,
after three hours upon the moors, I regularly forgot the pigs, but paid
good heed to the rashers. For ours is a hungry county, if such there
be in England; a place, I mean, where men must eat, and are quick to
discharge the duty. The air of the moors is so shrewd and wholesome,
stirring a man's recollection of the good things which have betided him,
and whetting his hope of something still better in the future, that by
the time he sits down to a cloth, his heart and stomach are tuned too
well to say "nay" to one another.

Almost everybody knows, in our part of the world at least, how pleasant
and soft the fall of the land is round about Plover's Barrows farm. All
above it is strong dark mountain, spread with heath, and desolate, but
near our house the valleys cove, and open warmth and shelter. Here are
trees, and bright green grass, and orchards full of contentment, and
a man may scarce espy the brook, although he hears it everywhere. And
indeed a stout good piece of it comes through our farm-yard, and swells
sometimes to a rush of waves, when the clouds are on the hill-tops. But
all below, where the valley bends, and the Lynn stream comes along with
it, pretty meadows slope their breast, and the sun spreads on the water.
And nearly all of this is ours, till you come to Nicholas Snowe's land.

But about two miles below our farm, the Bagworthy water runs into
the Lynn, and makes a real river of it. Thence it hurries away, with
strength and a force of wilful waters, under the foot of a barefaced
hill, and so to rocks and woods again, where the stream is cov