soon wrapped in the soft folds of its silence. The balm of its peace
comforted him, and brought ease and calmed the rebellion in his blood.
He was happy, forgetting that there ever had existed a schoolmaster, or
anything else unpleasant. Here he was free, and no one ever
misunderstood him. He gave pain to no one, and nothing ever hurt him
here.

He flung himself down among the rank gray grass and heather, while the
moor cock called to his mate in an agony of pleading passion, the
lapwing crooned upon a tuft of grass as she prepared a place for her
eggs, the whaup wheepled and twirled and cried in eerie alarm, the
plover sighed to a low white cloud wandering past; while the snipe and
the lark, the "mossie," the heather lintie, and the wandering, sighing
winds among the reeds and rushes of the swampy moss, all added their
notes to soothe and satisfy the little wounded spirit lying there on the
soft moorland. Already he was away upon the wings of fancy in a world of
his own--a world full of dreams and joys unspeakable; a world of calm
comfort, where there was no pain, no hunger, no unpleasantness; a world
of smiles and warm delights and love.

Thus he dreamed as he watched the white clouds trailing their draperies
along the sky, till the shadows creeping over the hills, and the cries
of the heron returning to his haunts in the moor, woke him to a
realization of the fact that the school was long since out, and probably
another thrashing awaited him when he got home. Sadly and regretfully he
dragged his little aching body from its soft mossy bed, felt that his
limbs were still sore, and that he was very, very hungry. Rebellion
again surging within him as he remembered all, he trudged home, fearful
yet proud, resolved to go through with the inevitable.