I was, in fact, twenty-one before I heard the roar again. Never since have I noticed it. But Ann, it seems, used to hear it continually, perhaps because she went out so seldom and could not become one of the mob of unquestionable “inhabitants o’ the earth.” But when the window had been shut, we, at any rate, forgot all about London in that warm room in Abercorran House, amidst the gleam of china and the glitter of brass and silver. Lewis and Harry sat on the floor, in a corner, playing with lead soldiers. The English army--that is to say, Lewis--was beaten, and refused to accept its fate. On being told, “But it is all over now,” he burst out crying. Harry looked on in sympathetic awe. But before his tears had quite come to their natural end, a brilliant idea caused him to uncover his face suddenly and say: “I know what I shall do. I shall build a tower like David--a real one--in the Wilderness.” “Oh, yes, let’s,” exclaimed Harry. “Us,” said Lewis, “I like that. It is I that shall build a tower. But I will _employ_ you.” “That,” mused Harry slowly, “means that I build a tower and let you live in it. That isn’t right. Mr Gladstone would never allow it.” “What has Mr Gladstone got to do with the Wilderness, I should like to know? We _employ_ him. I should like to see him getting over the fence into the Wilderness. He does not know where it is. Besides, if he did, he could _never_, _never_, get into my tower. If he did I would immediately fling myself down from the top. Then I should be safe,” shrieked Lewis, before entering another of those vales or abysses of tears which were so black for him, and so brief. It was not so agreeable as silence would have been, or as Ann’s sewing was, or the continuous bagpipe music of a kettle always just on the boil. But Philip had gone upstairs, and the book on my knee held me more than Lewis’s tears. This book placed me in a mountain solitude such as that where David Morgan had built his tower, and, like that, haunted by curlews: “The rugged mountain’s scanty cloak Was dwarfish shrubs of birch and oak, With shingles bare, and cliffs between, And patches bright of bracken green, And heather black that waved so high It held the copse in rivalry.” Out of the ambush of copse and heather and bracken had started up at a chieftain’s whistle--“wild as the scream of the curlew”--a host of mountaineers, while the Chieftain revealed himself to the enemy who had imagined him alone: “And, Saxon, I am Roderick Dhu.”