Now I would quite well like to stop here, and, indeed, I could easily do so. For a Diary, however dear, is not like any other book. When you finish one year's doings, you just get another ruled book and start with January First again. Only it is explained to me that I must not quite do that. At any rate I must absolutely tell what became of my characters! Now this is awfully funny. For, quite different from all the other story-books I ever read--nothing at all happened to any of them. Cissy is not married. No more is Elizabeth Fortinbras. No more, thank goodness, am I. Hugh John can't be--not for a long time yet. As for Toady Lion, he upholds the honor of his country (and of the Benbow Dormitory) by not being sick on the stormiest seas--a thing which none of the rest of the family would even attempt. But there is one thing that I must tell. It is just as well that I wrote down all about Torres Vedras, and the woods, and everything. For--sad it is to tell it--strange children dig and play there now. All our old beloved names for places and things and people would soon have been lost if they had not been written down in this book. We have set up a new home on the other side of the Edam Valley, and in some ways it is nicer. But in others it can never have the charm of the "Wampage," the "Scrubbery," the Low Park where the three bridges are, the Feudal Tower, and Picnicville, up among the Sentinel Pines! They make one's heart warm--only just the names of them said low in the heart, but now never spoken out loud by the tongue! Our new house is on a hill, and not in the howe of a valley. From the front door (and almost from every window) we can see woods and fields, and far-away cows that are no bigger than ants. Then on the hills beyond are sheep that you cannot see at all without one of father's big glasses, such as only the boys can use. Beyond those, again, there are the mountains that run right away down into England in wave after purple wave, each bending over a tiny bit as if it were real water just on the point of breaking. Eastward and southward there are "Pens" and "Muirs" and "Cairns" without number, and out of the window on clear mornings, as I lie in bed, I can watch the tasseled larch and white-stemmed birch sending scaling-parties up every ravine and watercourse, while the big white clouds, hump-backed ones, sail majestically over all. XXX SOME DISCLAIMERS LETTER NO. 1. HUGH JOHN'S LETTER.