Then came a reaction. His vehemence was succeeded by a gentler mood. He flung himself on the damp, dewy grass by the roadside, and buried his face in his hands. He felt he should like to cry. But his lids remained dry and burning. The thought of his immediate future was almost more than he could bear. He reflected that in a few hours he should find a forsaken wilderness, a howling desolation, where once bathed in all the rosy radiance of his boyish vision he had beheld a scene of sylvan peace and beauty. For though he had been a lonely, motherless boy, it would have been wicked and ungrateful to maintain that even _his_ childhood had not had its share of sunshine, and boasted its hours of unalloyed delight. Had he not been allowed to roam where he listed, through field and forest, untrammelled by conventions about meals and bedtime, as free to do as he pleased as any Robin Hood or gipsy in Arcadia? When the soft May zephyrs breathed on the shaking grasses, and the yellow butterfly danced from flower to flower, he had lain on his back between the tall blades and meadow-sweet, looking up into the blue sky, his day-dreams undisturbed. He might have stayed there from morning till night; so long as he was not hungry he did stay, and it mattered to no one. If he took it into his head to wander off with the shepherd to the distant moorlands, to partake of black bread from his wallet, and quench his thirst at the babbling streams, who was there to prevent it? He was his own master. Round the Castle, which commanded an extensive view of the country, flowed the sparkling, merry river, in great serpentine curves, between its wooded banks and green terraces. By the river-side there was always something of interest going on. There the grooms watered the horses, the tanner washed his skins, and the boys winked from behind their fishing-rods at the servant-girls paddling bare-legged in and out of the water. But greatest delight of all--when the sun went down behind the alders, the stately wild deer would venture cautiously out of the neighbouring thicket, climb down the steep incline, through bush and briar, and thirstily lap up the moisture with its parched tongue. Often it was necessary to lie in ambush more than half-an-hour without moving so much as a hair to witness this enchanting spectacle, otherwise it would have vanished like a mirage. And what in the world could be more glorious than, when the moon rose and cast a silver network on the ripples; when the alders looked like white-veiled princesses, and the lively wenches sang over their griddle snatches of plaintive song, to plunge into the depths of the wood, and with a canopy of foliage overhead, and moonbeams dancing round you, dream the night away, and wake to greet the dawn? He let his hands fall from his face; and stared round him with vacant, wild eyes. The fields lay white and still in the moonlight.