Private reasons, of no interest to the public, prevent me localising my early home. I am neither a criminal nor a hero, that people should be interested in my private life, and my only romantic experience will be found in this narrative. Telling my story over here will beguile my heart of a troublesome unrest which came to be positive pain, pain springing from a flood of memories, when a few moments ago a piano-organ at the next house played the waltz in "Faust." [Illustration: THE MILL AT BRACKEN GLEN.] I was born in the dwelling-house attached to a water-mill in a secluded glen far away in the north of England. My family held religious views shared by no sect I ever heard of, and lived lives of extraordinary austerity. No mirror, no musical instruments, no volumes of poetry, no novels, no games of any kind were permitted in our house. The furniture was the most simple, consistent with maintaining bodily efficiency for the performance of the day's work without hindrance or loss of time; our carpets were of the dullest colour, and were considered merely as a means of keeping out the cold and economising fuel. We had curtains on the windows, but they were only to exclude or divert the draughts. Our clothes were ample and warm, but they were of the hues of the earth in winter. We spoke few words and in low tones. We ate and drank in silence. We had no place of worship. The whole Sunday was spent in solemn walks and reading the Scriptures and a few pious books. We regarded Quakers as lax Christians. The household consisted of my father, his wife and children, and my father's brother, his wife and children. We were so large a family that all the mill work was done without the aid of strangers, and we all lived under one roof, in the mill house of Bracken Glen. I was the youngest, the youngest of all. Before I knew of any world beyond the mill and Bracken Glen, I thought it was a busy and cheerful place. Now that I come to look back on it I know it was one of the most desolate and lonely situations in all England. People talk of the woes of solitude in the forest, in an unpeopled island, in a crowd. But the most terrible and corroding solitude of all is that of a small group of human beings, a large family sunk deep among mountains far out of the reach of ordinary human intercourse, and living in such strict customs and observances as obtained at Bracken Glen. Of course we had the business always going on, and that prevented our people from going mad. But the mill was not in the main road. You had to turn up into the Glen to reach it, and no faces ever appeared in the yard but the faces of people coming on business to the mill. [Illustration: "I FELL GRIEVOUSLY ILL."]