A curious look came into the young fellow's eye, and gave me a new interest in him. He answered: "I like it. The wind here's like nowhere else. It plays tunes on the trees there as it comes through, and I get the echoes of them. Sometimes I hear the men's voices, and then I know what it is. It's the old Norsemen going out over the sea to look at their tracks again. Bless you, I've heard them talk about the Swan's bath. Sometimes the dead ladies come and whisper, and I know they're walking in the woods all the time the dusk lasts." I stared very much. This speech did not sound very sane, and yet it was uttered by a quiet young lad who looked as if he might be trusted. I thought, "Oh! Here's a kind of poet, or something of that sort," and I said, smilingly, "How do you come to know about the Norsemen, then?" "I have several books. I got one on a stall--a very good one about heroes. It has a lot in it about the Norsemen. If you come in you can see my books. You might have some tea. I put the kettle ready before I went out." I stepped into the hut, and found it warm and cosy. A cake of barley bread was on the table, and a little black teapot stood there also. There was no furniture but a low wooden bed, one chair, a settle, and a broad shelf. On the shelf was a slate scrabbled all over with geometrical figures, and one of these figures was a parabola with two tangents drawn touching. This puzzled me much. I sat down to warm my hands and my half-frozen face, and when I felt comfortable I said, "Do you read conic sections, young gentleman?" His bonnet was off now, and I saw his broad, compact forehead and his massive temples. He looked capable of reading anything. He replied, quite simply: "Oh, yes! I read geometrical conics." "And did you teach yourself?" "Yes. It isn't hard after you've got over the sixth book of Euclid." I grew more and more puzzled and interested. We had some tea, which made me feel positively luxurious, and then I looked at the backs of the books. There were "The Pilgrim's Progress," and "Tappan on the Will." Then came Shakespeare, a shilling edition of Keats, Drew's "Conic Sections," Hall's "Differential Calculus," Baker's "Land Surveying," Carlyle's "Heroes," a fat volume of Shelley, "The Antiquary," White's "Selborne," Bonnycastle's "Algebra," and five volumes of "The Tales of the Borders." "You have a capital lot of books, my man. I suppose you know them all by heart, pretty well?" "Yes, I know them; not by heart exactly, but I've had a lot of time these two winters, and I've gone over them and written about them." "Well, which do you like best of all?" "My fancy's all for mathematics, but I like poetry." "Ah! And I suppose you write poetry--don't you, now?" He was not abashed--he said in an ordinary tone, "Very often. It doesn't seem good, but I go on at it. It pleases me and puts away the time now and then. There's some in that copy-book at your side."