t 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