end of the wars of the Roses. So the towns did not want fortifications
to keep out the enemy, and their houses spread out beyond the old walls;
and the country houses had windows and doors large and wide open, with
no thought of keeping out foes, and farms and cottages were freely
spread about everywhere, with their fields round them.

The farms were very small, mostly held by men who did all the work
themselves with the help of their families.

Such a farm belonged to John Kenton of Elmwood. It lay at the head of a
long green lane, where the bushes overhead almost touched one another
in the summer, and the mud and mire were very deep in winter; but that
mattered the less as nothing on wheels went up or down it but the hay
or harvest carts, creaking under their load, and drawn by the old mare,
with a cow to help her.

Beyond lay a few small fields, and then a bit of open ground scattered
with gorse and thorn bushes, and much broken by ups and downs. There,
one afternoon on a big stone was seated Steadfast Kenton, a boy of
fourteen, sturdy, perhaps loutish, with an honest ruddy face under his
leathern cap, a coarse smock frock and stout gaiters. He was watching
the fifteen sheep and lambs, the old goose and gander and their nine
children, the three cows, eight pigs, and the old donkey which got their
living there.

From the top of the hill, beyond the cleft of the river Avon, he could
see the smoke and the church towers of the town of Bristol, and beyond
it, the slime of the water of the Bristol Channel; and nearer, on one
side, the spire of Elmwood Church looked up, and, on the other, the
woods round Elmwood House, and these ran out as it were, lengthening and
narrowing into a wooded cleft or gulley, Hermit's Gulley, which broke
the side of the hill just below where Steadfast stood, and had a little
clear stream running along the bottom.

Steadfast's little herd knew the time of day as well as if they all had
watches in their pockets, and they never failed to go down and have a
drink at the brook before going back to the farmyard.

They did not need to be driven, but gathered into the rude steep path
that they and their kind had worn in the side of the ravine. Steadfast
followed, looking about him to judge how soon the nuts would be ripe,
while his little rough stiff-haired dog Toby poked about in search of
rabbits or hedgehogs, or the like sport.

Steadfast liked that pathway home beside the stream, as boys do