hours every evening until the boy was able to read very well, after
which they read the Bible through together, the poor man explaining
everything, especially the historical parts, so clearly and beautifully,
with such an intimate knowledge of the countries and peoples and customs
of the remote East, that it was all more interesting than a fairy tale.
Finally he gave his copy of the Bible to Isaac, and told him to carry it
in his pocket every day when he went out on the downs, and when he sat
down to take it out and read in it. For by this time Isaac, who was now
ten years old, had been engaged as a shepherd-boy to his great
happiness, for to be a shepherd was his ambition.

Then one day the stranger rolled up his few belongings in a bundle and
put them on a stick which he placed on his shoulder, said good-bye, and
went away, never to return, taking his sad secret with him.

Isaac followed the stranger's counsel, and when he had sons of his own
made them do as he had done from early boyhood. Caleb had never gone
with his flock on the down without the book, and had never passed a day
without reading a portion.

The incidents and observations gathered in many talks with the old
shepherd, which I have woven into the foregoing chapters, relate mainly
to the earlier part of his life, up to the time when, a married man and
father of three small children, he migrated to Warminster. There he was
in, to him, a strange land, far away from friends and home and the old
familiar surroundings, amid new scenes and new people, But the few years
he spent at that place had furnished him with many interesting memories,
some of which will be narrated in the following chapters.

I have told in the account of Winterbourne Bishop how I first went to