a
meal-sack once, weighing eight stone."

I burst out laughing, which maybe was what he wanted, and forthwith
consented to assume the place of the meal-sack. He took me on his
back--what a strong fellow he was!--and fairly trotted with me down
the garden walk. We were both very merry; and though I was his senior
I seemed with him, out of my great weakness and infirmity, to feel
almost like a child.

"Please to take me to that clematis arbour; it looks over the Avon.
Now, how do you like our garden?"

"It's a nice place."

He did not go into ecstasies, as I had half expected; but gazed about
him observantly, while a quiet, intense satisfaction grew and diffused
itself over his whole countenance.

"It's a VERY nice place."

Certainly it was. A large square, chiefly grass, level as a
bowling-green, with borders round. Beyond, divided by a low hedge, was
the kitchen and fruit garden--my father's pride, as this old-fashioned
pleasaunce was mine. When, years ago, I was too weak to walk, I knew,
by crawling, every inch of the soft, green, mossy, daisy-patterned
carpet, bounded by its broad gravel walk; and above that, apparently
shut in as with an impassable barrier from the outer world, by a
three-sided fence, the high wall, the yew-hedge, and the river.

John Halifax's comprehensive gaze seemed to take in all.

"Have you lived here long?" he asked me.

"Ever since I was born."

"Ah!--well, it's a nice place," he repeated, somewhat sadly. "This
grass plot is very even--thirty yards square, I should guess. I'd get
up and pace it; only I'm rather tired."

"Are you? Yet you would carry--"

"Oh--that's nothing. I've often walked farther than to-day. But still
it's a good step across the country since morning."

"How far have you come?"

"From the foot of those hills--I forget what they call them--over
there. I have seen bigger ones--but they're steep enough--bleak and
cold, too, especially when one is lying out among the sheep. At a
distance they look pleasant. This is a very pretty view."

Ay, so I had always thought it; more so than ever now, when I had some
one to say to how "very pretty" it was. Let me describe it--this first
landscape, the sole picture of my boyish days, and vivid as all such
pictures are.

At the end of the arbour the wall which enclosed us on the riverward
side was cut down--my father had done it at my asking--so as to make a
seat, something after the fashion of Queen