given him, may find an antidote to all its poison in the meanest herb
beneath his feet.

There, you do not understand me, my boys; and the best prayer I can offer
for you is, perhaps, that you should never need to understand me: but if
that sore need should come, and that poison should begin to spread its
mist over your brains and hearts, then you will be proof against it; just
in proportion as you have used the eyes and the common sense which God
has given you, and have considered the lilies of the field, how they
grow.

C. KINGSLEY.




CHAPTER I--THE GLEN


You find it dull walking up here upon Hartford Bridge Flat this sad
November day? Well, I do not deny that the moor looks somewhat dreary,
though dull it need never be. Though the fog is clinging to the
fir-trees, and creeping among the heather, till you cannot see as far as
Minley Corner, hardly as far as Bramshill woods--and all the Berkshire
hills are as invisible as if it was a dark midnight--yet there is plenty
to be seen here at our very feet. Though there is nothing left for you
to pick, and all the flowers are dead and brown, except here and there a
poor half-withered scrap of bottle-heath, and nothing left for you to
catch either, for the butterflies and insects are all dead too, except
one poor old Daddy-long-legs, who sits upon that piece of turf, boring a