in the sixth year of my
reign. On the East side of the isle, there was a large ridge of rocks,
which lay two miles from the shore; and a shoal of sand lay for half a
mile from the rocks to the beach. To get round to this point, I had to
sail a great way out to sea; and here I all but lost my life.

But I got back to my home at last. On my way there, quite worn out with
the toils of the boat, I lay down in the shade to rest my limbs, and
slept. But judge, if you can, what a start I gave, when a voice woke
me out of my sleep, and spoke my name three times! A voice in this wild
place! To call me by name, too! Then the voice said, "Where are you?
Where have you been? How came you here?" But now I saw it all; for at
the top of the hedge sat Poll, who did but say the words she had been
taught by me.

I now went in search of some goats, and laid snares for them, with rice
for a bait I had set the traps in the night, and found they had all
stood, though the bait was gone. So I thought of a new way to take them,
which was to make a pit and lay sticks and grass on it, so as to hide
it; and in this way I caught an old goat and some kids. But the old goat
was much too fierce for me, so I let him go. I brought all the young
ones home, and let them fast a long time, till at last they fed from my
hand, and were quite tame. I kept them in a kind of park, in which there
were trees to screen them from the sun. At first my park was three miles
round; but it struck me that, in so great a space, the kids would soon
get as wild as if they had the range of the whole vale, and that it
would be as well to give them less room; so I had to make a hedge which
took me three months to plant. My park held a flock of twelve goats, and
in two years more there were more than two score.

My dog sat at meals with me, and one cat on each side of me, on stools,
and we had Poll to talk to us. Now for a word or two as to the dress in
which I made a tour round the isle. I could but think how droll it would
look in the streets of the town in which I was born. I wore a high cap
of goat's skin, with a flap that hung, down, to keep the sun and rain
from my neck, a coat made from the skin of a goat too, the skirts of
which came down to my hips, and the same on my legs, with no shoes, but
flaps of the fur round my shins. I had a broad belt of the same round
my waist, which drew on with two thongs; and from it, on my right side,
hung a saw and an axe; and on my lef