164 ADVENTURES AMONG BIRDS 



and took no part in games, but who had an intense love 

 of the wild, a desire to be always out of doors by 

 himself, following and watching the birds. 



I was like that myself at his age, but was more happily 

 placed, having no school to crawl to nor miserable 

 books to pore over. 



One day, just before leaving, I came in to my six- 

 o'clock meal, after a long spell on the heath, to find 

 my landlady, as usual ready and even eager to listen 

 to anything I had to tell her. For she, too, at home in 

 her cottage, had been alone all day, except for a few 

 minutes when her boy came in at noon to swallow his 

 dinner and run off to the nearest wood or heath to get 

 as much time as possible before the clanging of the 

 school-bell called him in again. Now everything 

 I ever told her about my rambles on the heath had 

 appeared to interest her in an extraordinary way. She 

 would listen to an account of where I had been, to which 

 old ditch, or barrow, or holly clump, also what birds 

 I had found there, and to the most trivial incidents, as 

 if to some wonderful tale of adventure ; she would 

 listen in silence until I ended, when she would ask a 

 dozen questions to take me all over the ground again 

 and keep up the talk about the heath. On this occasion 

 she said more, telling me that the heath had been very 

 much to her ; then little by little she let out the 

 whole story concerning her feeling for it. It was 

 the story of her life from the time of her marriage up 

 to little over a year ago, when her two children were 

 aged nine and six respectively. For there were two 



