We were more than ever at the farm now. During the summer, from the
time we got up till the time we went to bed, we seldom approached the
manse. I have heard it hinted that my father neglected us. But that
can hardly be, seeing that then his word was law to us, and now I
regard his memory as the symbol of the love unspeakable. My elder
brother Tom always had his meals with him, and sat at his lessons in
the study. But my father did not mind the younger ones running wild,
so long as there was a Kirsty for them to run to; and indeed the men
also were not only friendly to us, but careful over us. No doubt we
were rather savage, very different in our appearance from town-bred
children, who are washed and dressed every time they go out for a
walk: that we should have considered not merely a hardship, but an
indignity. To be free was all our notion of a perfect existence. But
my father's rebuke was awful indeed, if he found even the youngest
guilty of untruth, or cruelty, or injustice. At all kinds of
escapades, not involving disobedience, he smiled, except indeed there
were too much danger, when he would warn and limit.

A town boy may wonder what we could find to amuse us all day long; but
the fact is almost everything was an amusement, seeing that when we
could not take a natural share in what was going on, we generally
managed to invent some collateral employment fictitiously related to
it. But he must not think of our farm as at all like some great farm
he may happen to know in England; for there was nothing done by
machinery on the place. There may be great pleasure in watching
machine-operations, but surely none to equal the pleasure we had. If
there had been a steam engine to plough my father's fields, how could
we have ridden home on its back in the evening? To ride the