treated the pale little boy, who was always hanging over his books, more
like a son than a servant, and this feeling was fully shared by Mr.
Gregory's mother. John's chief labours were to attend to a horse and a
couple of cows, and occasionally to do some light work in the garden or
the potato field; and as these occupations seldom filled more than part
of the day or the week, he had all the rest of the time to himself. A
characteristic part of Clare's nature began to reveal itself now. While
he had little leisure to himself, and much hard work, he was not averse
to the society of friends and companions, either, as in the case of
Turnill, for study, or, as with others, for recreation; but as soon as he
found himself, to a certain extent, his own master, he forsook the
company of his former acquaintances, and began to lead a sort of hermit's
life. He took long strolls into the woods, along the meres, and to other
lonely places, and got into the habit of remaining whole hours at some
favourite spot, lying flat on the ground, with his face toward the sky.
The flickering shadows of the sun; the rustling of the leaves on the
trees; the sailing of the fitful clouds over the horizon, and the golden
blaze of the sky at morn and eventide, were to him spectacles of which
his eye never tired, with which his heart never got satiated. And as he
grew more and more the constant worshipper of nature, in any of her
aspects, so his mind gradually became indifferent to almost all other
objects. What men did, what they had done, or what they were going to do,
he did not seem to care for, or had the least curiosity to know. In the
midst of these solitary rambles from his 'Blue Bell' home, the news was
brought of some extraordinary discoveries at Castor, his mother's native
village. It was news which, one might have thought, would fire the
imagination of any man gifted with the most ordinary understanding. In a
part of the township of Castor called Dormanton Fields, the greater part
of the vast ruins of Durobrivae were discovered: temples and arches
crumbled into dust; many-coloured tiles and brickwork; urns and antique