away upon the moor with Piers and the sheep, where there was no one
to criticise him, or predict that nothing would ever make him do
honour to his name if he were proved ten times a baron.

It was still worse when Bunce came over, and brought a taller horse,
and such real weapons as he deemed that the young lord might be
taught to use, and there were doleful auguries and sharp reproofs,
designed in comically respectful phrases, till he was almost beside
himself with being thus tormented, and ready to wish never to hear of
being a baron.

His relief was to wander away upon the moors, watch the lights and
shadows on the wondrous mountains, or dream on the banks of the
river, by which he could make his way to the seashore, a place of
endless wonder and contemplation, as he marvelled why the waters
flowed in and retreated again, watched the white crests, and the
glassy rolls of the waves, felt his mind and aspiration stretched as
by something illimitable, even as when he looked up to the sky, and
saw star beyond star, differing from one another in brightness.
There were those white birds too, differing from all the night-jars
and plovers he had seen on the moor, floating now over the waves, now
up aloft and away, as if they were soaring into the very skies. Oh,
would that he could follow them, and rise with them to know what were
those great grey or white clouds, and what was above or below in
those blue vastnesses! And whence came all those strange things that
the water spread at his feet the long, brown, wet streamers, or the
delicate red tracery that could be seen in the clear pools, where
were sometimes those lumps like raw flesh when closed, but which
opened into flowers? Or the things like the snails on the heath, yet
not snails, and all the strange creatures that hopped and danced in