It is an island of gravelly limestone, surrounded by a sea of bog, soft as sponge and full of water, on which I should not have ventured, although I knew the course to take, but for my present peril. For nine months of the year, Lindholme was then as much cut off from the rest of the world as if it had been a lonely rock in mid-ocean, for ever beaten by stormy waves. In the winter it was accessible by flat-bottomed boats, and during a hard frost one might walk over, or go on skates. The islet is about three-quarters of a mile long and an eighth of a mile wide. Toward the northern end it rises into a small hill, near the foot of which there is a spring of clear, sweet water. How it comes to pass that there is such a spring, when all the water in the bog around it is as brown as October ale, I do not understand. At the time of which I write, a grove of oaks grew north of the hill, and a pretty thick plantation of willows and alders occupied the southern tongue of the island. The hermit inhabited a stud-bound house with three rooms, roughly but curiously furnished. A little way off stood a row of buildings--three low hovels of stone and half a dozen wooden huts of different sizes. Here lived the hermit's servants--a man and his wife and their son, a big lad of sixteen or seventeen years of age. Here, too, were kept the hermit's farm-stock--a small bull and four cows, a dozen sheep, and a large number of poultry. Bland, or rather his man and boy, cultivated abut one half of the soil of his domain with plough and spade, getting amazingly heavy crops of corn and pulse. The hermit was of middle stature, perhaps five feet eight inches, strongly built, not remarkable but for his face, which was strangely irregular, as though it had not been finished in the making. His nose was not to be described as Roman, or aquiline, or by any term commonly used in speaking of that feature. A child might make one like it in modelling a face in clay. His mouth was large, the lower lip hanging. The eyebrows projected far over his eyes, which had a peculiar look, due, as one found on close observation, to the fact that the pupil of one was of a bluish grey and that of the other almost black. His abundant dark hair and great beard were streaked with silver.