additions, and looked new and neat and well cared for. The mound,
however, still stood its ground, and had relapsed into something of its
old savage condition; it would have warranted a theory of Mr. Oldbuck's
as to its possible former purposes and origin. I looked at its crumbled
and irregular wall, from which the turf had peeled or been washed away;
at the tangled growth of grasses and weeds round the top, crenellated
with many a breach and gap; and the hollow, now choked up with luxuriant
evergreens that overtopped the inclosure and forbade entrance to it, and
thought of my mother's work and my girlish play there, and was glad to
see her old sand-heap was still standing, though her planting had, with
the blessing of time, made it impenetrable to me.

Our cottage was the last decent dwelling on that side of the village;
between ourselves and the heath and pine wood there was one miserable
shanty, worthy of the poorest potato patch in Ireland. It was inhabited
by a ragged ruffian of the name of E----, whose small domain we
sometimes saw undergoing arable processes by the joint labor of his son
and heir, a ragged ruffian some sizes smaller than himself, and of a
half-starved jackass, harnessed together to the plow he was holding;
occasionally the team was composed of the quadruped and a tattered and
fierce-looking female biped, a more terrible object than even the man
and boy and beast whose labors she shared.

On the other side our nearest neighbors, separated from us by the common
and its boundary road, were a family of the name of ----, between whose
charming garden and pretty residence and our house a path was worn by a
constant interchange of friendly intercourse.

I followed no regular studies whatever during our summer at Weybridge.
We lived chiefly in the open air, on the heath, in the beautiful wood
above the meadows of Brooklands, and in the neglected, picturesque
inclosure of Portmore Park, whose tenantless, half-ruined mansion, and
noble cedars, with the lovely windings of the river Wey in front, made
it a place an artist would have delighted to spend his hours in.

We haunted it constantly for another purpose. My mother had a perfect
passion for fishing, and would spend whole days by the river, pursuing
her favorite sport. We generally all accompanied her, carrying baskets
and tackle and bait, kettles and camp stools, and looking very much like
a family of gypsies on the tramp. We were each of us armed w