Boys -- Juvenile fiction; Fantasy literature; Nature -- Juvenile fiction; Self-reliance -- Juvenile fiction
on them, he gathered some dry grass into a little heap, and lying
down in it, was soon in a sound sleep.
It was not until the late afternoon next day that Martin at last got
to the foot of the hill, or mountain, and looking up he saw it like
a great wall of stone above him, with trees and bushes and trailing
vines growing out of the crevices and on the narrow ledges of the
rock. Going some distance he came to a place where he could ascend,
and here he began slowly walking upwards. At first he could hardly
contain his delight where everything looked new and strange, and
here he found some very beautiful flowers; but as he toiled on he
grew more tired and hungry at every step, and then, to make matters
worse, his legs began to pain so that he could hardly lift them. It
was a curious pain which he had never felt in his sturdy little legs
before in all his wanderings.
Then a cloud came over the sun, and a sharp wind sprang up that made
him shiver with cold: then followed a shower of rain; and now Martin,
feeling sore and miserable, crept into a cavity beneath a pile of
overhanging rocks for shelter. He was out of the rain there, but the
wind blew in on him until it made his teeth chatter with cold. He
began to think of his mother, and of all the comforts of his lost
home--the bread and milk when he was hungry, the warm clothing, and
the soft little bed with its snowy white coverlid in which he had
slept so sweetly every night.
"O mother, mother!" he cried, but his mother was too far off to hear
his piteous cry.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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