USK: MY EARLIEST MEMORIES 23 



sticks for a fire, which he lit with a tinder-box and match 

 from his pocket. Then, when a large fire had been made, he 

 produced some potatoes which he had picked up in a field on 

 the way, and which he then roasted beautifully in the embers, 

 and even produced from another pocket a pinch of salt in a 

 screw of paper, so that the two boys had a very good supper. 

 Then, collecting fern and dead leaves for a bed, and I think 

 making a coverlet by taking off their two jackets, which made 

 them quite comfortable while lying as close together as possible, 

 they enjoyed a good night's sleep till daybreak, when they 

 easily found their way home. 



This seemed so delightful that one day John provided him- 

 self with the matchbox, salt, and potatoes, and having climbed 

 up the steep bank behind our house, as we often did, and passed 

 over a field or two to the woods beyond, to my great delight a 

 fire was made, and we also feasted on potatoes with salt, as 

 Sandford and Merton had done. Of course we did not com- 

 plete the imitation of the story by sleeping in the wood, which 

 would have been too bold and dangerous an undertaking for 

 our sisters to join in, even if my brother and I had wished to 

 do so. 



Another vivid memory of these early years consists of oc- 

 casional visits to Usk Castle. Some friends of our family 

 lived in the house to which the ruins of the castle were at- 

 tached, and we children were occasionally invited to tea, when 

 a chief part of our entertainment was to ascend the old keep 

 by the spiral stair, and walk round the top, which had a low 

 parapet on the outer side, while on the inner we looked down 

 to the bottom of the tower, which descended below the ground- 

 level into an excavation said to have been the dungeon. The 

 top of the walls was about three feet thick, and it was thus 

 quite safe to walk round close to the parapet, though there was 

 no protection on the inner edge but the few herbs and bushes 

 that grew upon it. For many years this small fragment of a 

 mediaeval castle served to illustrate for me the stories of 

 knights and giants and prisoners immured in dark and dismal 

 dungeons. In our friend's pretty grounds, where we often had 



