“The woods ended at the top in a tangle of thorns, and it was there I saw my first fox. I was crawling among some brambles, amusing myself with biting off the blackberries, when a fox jumped up out of a tuft and faced me, his eyes on the level with mine. I was pleased as well as startled, never took my eyes off him, and presently began to crawl forward again. But at this the fox flashed his teeth at me with a snap, and was off before I could think of anything to say. High above these thorns stood four Scotch firs, forming a sort of gateway by which I usually re-entered the woods. Gazing up their tall stems that moved slowly and softly like a grasshopper’s horns, as if they were breathing, I took my last look at the sky before plunging under beech and yew. There were always squirrels in one of them, chasing one another clattering up and down the bark, or chattering at me, close at hand, as if their nerves were shattered with surprise and indignation. When they had gone out of sight I began to run--faster and faster, running and sliding down with a force that carried me over the meadow at the foot, and across the road to the steps and home. I had ten years in that home and in those woods. Then my father died; I went to school; I entered an office. Those ten years were reality. Everything since has been scarcely more real than the world was when it was still cut off by the hills across the valley, and I looked lazily towards it from under the cypress where the little bird sang. There is nothing to rest on, nothing to make a man last like the old men I used to see in cottage gardens or at gateways in the valley of the Uther.” “Well,” said Mr Morgan once, “I don’t often agree with Mr Torrance, but I am very glad he exists.” CHAPTER XI MR STODHAM, THE RESPECTABLE MAN, AND THE DRYAD To Mr Stodham, I think, Mr Torrance’s books were the man. He--perhaps he alone in England--possessed a full set of the thirty-three volumes produced by Mr Torrance under his own name in thirteen years. “It is wonderful,” said Ann once, “that the dancing of a pen over a sheet of paper can pay the rent and the baker’s bill, and it hardly seems right. But, still, it appears there are people born that can do nothing else, and they must live like the rest of us.... And I will say that Mr Torrance is one of the best of us, though he has that peculiarity.” Mr Stodham could not trust himself to speak. He really liked Ann: furthermore, he knew that she was wiser than he: finally, everyone at that moment had something better to think of, because Jack and Roland had put on the gloves. Mr Stodham, consequently, quoted George Borrow: “There’s the wind on the heath, brother; if I could only feel that, I would gladly live for ever. Dosta, we’ll now go to the tents and put on the gloves; and I’ll try to make you feel what a sweet thing it is to be alive, brother.”