Behind Bossington lay Allercombe Woods, great tree-covered hills sloping on one side down to the road which connected, and still connects, Porlock with Minehead and the outside world, and on the other, descending precipitously to the sea; so precipitously indeed that it seemed always a wonder to me how the thickly growing but stunted fir-trees could preserve their shape and regularity. The descent from Bossington Headland into Porlock was by a steep winding path through Allercombe Woods, and many a time I have looked through the thin coating of green leaves upon the fields which stretched like a piece of patchwork below down to the sea, and wondered whether any other country in the world (I had never been out of Devonshire then) could be more beautiful than this. Within a stone's throw of where the blue sea of our English Bay of Naples rippled in on to the firm white sands, was the tumble-down old building in which we lived. What there had been of walls had long before our time been hidden by climbing plants and ivy, and in summer-time the place from a distance somewhat resembled a gigantic nosegay of cottage roses, jessamine, and other creeping flowers. There was but a small garden and no ground, for Bossington Headland rose precipitously close to the back of the house, and in front there was no space for any. A shed served as a stable for one or two Exmoor ponies, and also as a sleeping-place for the lanky, raw-boned Devonshire lad whom we kept to look after them. There were but few habitable rooms in our mansion, but they were sufficient, for our household was a small one. My father, mother, sister, myself, and a country servant comprised it. We never had a visitor, save occasionally the clergyman from Porlock. We never went anywhere. We knew no one, and at seventeen years of age an idea which had been developing in me for a long time, took to itself the tangible shape of words. "Father," I said to him one evening when we were sitting out upon our little strip of lawn together, he smoking, I envying him for being able to smoke, "do you know that I have never been out of Devonshire--never been further than Exeter even, and I am eighteen years old?" It was long before he answered me, and when, at last, he turned round and did so, I was distressed to see the look of deep anxiety in his worn, handsome face, and the troubled light in his clear eyes. "I know it, my boy," he said, pityingly. "I have been expecting this. You are weary of the country."