Jack's mind was like a seething caldron with these and similar thoughts and conjectures, and had been so, ever since he had heard the tale of Agnes Harland. He had never dared heretofore to mention the subject, and he hardly knew how he had ventured to begin upon it now. But there had already sprung up a very warm and intimate friendship between the old man of fourscore, grave, silent, and somewhat severe in his manners, and the fresh-hearted impulsive schoolboy, with his head full of the classical learning he had acquired at school, and the tales he had heard from his father and Cousin Cicely. Deaf Margery remarked with some little jealousy, that Master Thomas said more words to Jacky in one day than he had done to her in a month; forgetting, poor woman, that Master Thomas might as well have tried to keep up a conversation with one of his own sheep. Thomas himself was conscious of a new flavor, as it were, given to his quiet life by the advent of his young kinsman, which repaid him tenfold for any trouble he had taken in the matter. On this particular day, Jack and his uncle were alone on the breezy side of Holford Hill, looking over a beautiful prospect of meadow, waste and woodland. The old man sat on a flat stone, leaning back against a great stunted oak tree which grew very conveniently just behind this his favorite seat, and, with his hands folded before him, seemed lost in meditation. Jack lay at full length on the thymy and springing turf, gazing up into the blue sky, and watching now the rooks, now the great sailing white clouds which passed over it. Suddenly he spoke out: "Uncle Thomas, did you ever see a Bible?" [Illustration: "Uncle Thomas, did you ever see a Bible?"] The old man started and turned round with a look of surprise, somewhat as if his own thoughts had found an echo in the boy's words. "A Bible, lad! And what set thee to thinking of a Bible?" "Oh, I don't know exactly. I should so like to see one. There must be such fine tales in the Bible," replied Jack, feeling his way, as it were. "Tales of St. George and St. Patrick and such like." The old man smiled and shook his head shrewdly. "I am not so sure of that, my son. I never saw or heard any such. I doubt whether St. George and St. Patrick are in the Bible at all, though they may be there for all that." It was now Jack's turn to start. "Then you have seen a Bible!" he said, raising himself on his elbow and looking earnestly at the shepherd. And as Thomas did not answer, he repeated again, "Then you have really seen a Bible?" "Ay, lad," replied the shepherd. "I have both seen a Bible, and held it in my hands, and read it too." "But where? But how?" asked Jack. "Raise yourself up and look about you," said the old man. "Do you see any one near?"