g into bodily peril
worse than any frost or snow.

For a long month he had not even seen his Insie, and his hot young heart
had never before been treated so contemptuously. He had been allowed to
show himself in the gill at his regular interval, a fortnight ago. But
no one had ventured forth to meet him, or even wave signal of welcome
or farewell. But that he could endure, because he had been warned not to
hope for much that Friday; now, however, it was not his meaning to
put up with any more such nonsense. That he, who had been told by the
servants continually that all the land for miles and miles around was
his, should be shut out like a beggar, and compelled to play bo-peep, by
people who lived in a hole in the ground, was a little more than in the
whole entire course of his life he could ever have imagined. His mind
was now made up to let them know who he was and what he was; and unless
they were very quick in coming to their senses, Jordas should have
orders to turn them out, and take Insie altogether away from them.

But in spite of all brave thoughts and words, Master Pet began to spy
about very warily, ere ever he descended from the moor into the gill.
He seemed to have it borne in upon his mind that territorial
rights--however large and goodly--may lead only to a taste of earth,
when earth alone is witness to the treatment of her claimant. Therefore
it behooved him to look sharp; and possessing the family gift of keen
sight, he began to spy about, almost as shrewdly as if he had been
educated in free trade. But first he had wit enough to step below the
break, and get behind a gorse bush, lest haply he should illustrate only
the passive voice of seeing.

In the deep cut of the glen there was very little snow, only a few veins
and patches here and there, threading and seaming the steep, as if a
white-footed hare had been coursing about. Little stubby brier shoots,
and clumps of russet bracken, and dead heather, ruffling like a brown
dog's back, broke the dull surface of withered herbage, thistle stumps,
teasels, rugged banks, and naked brush. Down in the bottom the noisy
brook was scurrying over its pebbles brightly, or plunging into gloom of
its own production; and away at the bend of the valley was seen the cot
of poor Lancelot's longing.

The situation was worth a sigh, and came half way to share one; Pet
sighed heavily, and deeply felt how wrong it was of any one to treat him
so. What could be easier for