Now I did not know who she had been, nor how married before made a widow, nor what had been my father’s character or business. But all at once these things began to exercise my mind, when, in the first days of my complete separation from the house, I seemed to realise myself as something cut away from the main stem, a runner pinned down and then severed, and responsible for its own future development. In fact, I began to think on my own account, as was my engagement with Lord Skene; only, at the outset, I am afraid, with little concern for a possible vocation. Choice of that, I considered, whether for brain or hand, might follow on a certain knowledge of my origin; and whoever my father had been, I had no intention to insult his memory by a pretence to better dues than his. On the contrary, I rather hoped, in my savage misanthropy, to discover how my origin justified me in digging for my living. But in truth, for all my mood I spent my time as much in dreaming as in brooding. I was at the romantic age, the soft shadows of life on one side, its infinite heights on the other. The repinings of misunderstood youth appeal, I think, much more sentimentally to the kind observer than they deserve. A thousand compensations of wonder and expectation are always at the service of the most oppressed young manhood. I found plenty for myself in that strange solitary life--the knowledge of woods at dawn; the intimacy of venturesome birds; the cosy lamp-lit room, my own, and shelves of glistening books. I owed most of the last to the good-natured kindness of Lord Skene, who had sent me down a small library of volumes at the latter end of my furnishing. These were generally tied into bundles of a dozen or so, and had been bought years before, as he told me when I went to thank him for his gift, at a sale following the decease of a young neighbour of his. They had never, for the most part, been opened since, and it was my pleasure to untie the dusty strings which restored their treasures to the light. They have their part in the development of the strange story, whose opening chapter was now to date itself from the date of my entrance into the lodge in the Caddle.