Geoff's mind was pleasurably moved in a different way. The freedom, the silence, the fresh air, entered into his little being like wine. He had not much experienced the delights of solitude. A sickly child, who has to be watched continually, and who is alone in the sense of having no playmates, no one of his own age near him, has less experience than the robust of true aloneness. He had been always with his mother, always, in his mother's brief absences,--so brief that they scarcely told in the little story of his life,--under the charge of the nurse, who was entirely devoted to him. He knew all the stories she had to tell by heart, and yet would have them repeated, with a certain pleasure in the sound of the words. But his mother,--he never could be sure what she was going to say. To question her was the chief occupation of his life, and she never was weary of replying. His days were full of this perpetual intercourse. So it happened that to get out alone into the absolute stillness, broken only by the rustle of the leaves, the sound of the wind as it brought them down, the twitter of the birds, the tinkle of the little stream, was a new delight to Geoff, unlike anything that had gone before. And to see miles and miles before him, to see all round, roads stretching into the unknown, houses and churches and woods, all nameless and new; was he riding out to seek his fortune, was he going to conquer the world, was he the prince riding to the castle where the Sleeping Beauty lay? Or was he going on unawares to the ogre's castle, where he was to kill the giant and deliver the prisoners?