Boys -- Juvenile fiction; Fantasy literature; Nature -- Juvenile fiction; Self-reliance -- Juvenile fiction
white partridge-berries and had made a poor supper 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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