There was one spot upon the hill, half-way between the valley and the
moorland, which was my favourite haunt. This part of the hill was
covered with great blocks of stone, of all shapes and sizes--here
crowded together, like the slain where the battle had been fiercest;
there parting asunder from spaces of delicate green--of softest grass.
In the centre of one of these green spots, on a steep part of the hill,
were three huge rocks--two projecting out of the hill, rather than
standing up from it, and one, likewise projecting from the hill, but
lying across the tops of the two, so as to form a little cave, the back
of which was the side of the hill. This was my refuge, my home within a
home, my study--and, in the hot noons, often my sleeping chamber, and my
house of dreams. If the wind blew cold on the hillside, a hollow of
lulling warmth was there, scooped as it were out of the body of the
blast, which, sweeping around, whistled keen and thin through the cracks
and crannies of the rocky chaos that lay all about; in which confusion
of rocks the wind plunged, and flowed, and eddied, and withdrew, as the
sea-waves on the cliffy shores or the unknown rugged bottoms. Here I
would often lie, as the sun went down, and watch the silent growth of
another sea, which the stormy ocean of the wind could not disturb--the
sea of the darkness. First it would begin to gather in the bottom of
hollow places. Deep valleys, and all little pits on the hill-sides, were
well-springs where it gathered, and whence it seemed to overflow, till
it had buried the earth beneath its mass, and, rising high into the
heavens, swept over the faces of the stars, washed the blinding day from
them, and let them shine, down through the waters of the dark, to the
eyes of men below. I would lie till nothing but the stars and the dim
outlines of hills against the sky was to be seen, and then rise and go
home, as sure of my path as if I had been descending a dark staircase in
my father's house.