I asked Hugh John why he had never taken Sir Toady up to his Cave of the Winds, and he said, "Oh, Toady--he would be getting out boxes to stuff with beetles, and skirmishing for birds' eggs. He's all right in a wood, that Toadums--better than me--but no good on the hillside, and too larky all round in places where you can be seen miles off." "And what do you do up here yourself?" I said. "I am _by_ myself," he answered. "I think--I read!" "But you have a room _to_ yourself in the house. You can go there!" For I thought he was exceedingly well off. Because I have to share mine with the Maid, who kicks like a young colt in her sleep. But Hugh John gave me a look of utmost contempt. "Did you never hear of Obermann?" he said, "--the man who made a cave on the Pic de Jaman. I showed it to you when we stopped at Glion on the way to Lausanne." "It was a cow-chalet then," I reminded him. But he swept on without the least heed of details. "Yes, and Mr. Arnold has a lovely poem all about him, and 'the wild bees' hum,' and 'his sad tranquil lore.' This isn't quite the Pic de Jaman, of course, but it is just as lonely, if you don't tell anybody, that is, and I've only told you, Sis! Never mind!" So I swore never to reveal his hiding-place, and he showed me all he had written about his observations. He had a shelf covered in with wood and a lot of copy-books. Here was written all he had seen through the glasses he had borrowed and the three-draw telescope of his own which he carried constantly in his pocket. Oh, it was wonderful what he had observed--all about the changing seasons, the country people, the moor-birds, the gamekeepers, and the comings and goings of Sir Bulleigh Bunny. "Anybody can hide in a wood," he said, "but it takes Obermann and me to do it on a bare hill!" Then he smiled a little and confessed. "I don't really know much about him," he said, "except that his name was Senancour. I got his book out of the library, all marked with father's scribblings, but I really couldn't understand much of it. Only this that I translated--you could do it better, of course. It is about himself when he was as old as we are, and felt just the same.