Even after the summer had waned his wanderings continued. They bore him into all kinds of wonderful and unexpected places. Sometimes he found himself in the high and mountainous country; and here the grandeur, the solitude, and the marvellous hues and the deep-breathing silences would endue him with the awe of his inheritance. And wherever he was borne by the irresponsible passion of his steps, he beheld infinite wonders. He saw great pits sunk into the bowels of the earth; he saw curious and grimy peoples, yet it cost him no pang to admit them into all-embracing kinship with himself, and with the Earth, his mother. When as the tints of autumn fell about the quiet earth, and he felt the shrewd airs of the tall mountains of the west, he heard their voices in such wise in his ears, as never before had addressed them. With a loud, fervent cry, he flung himself down upon the fruitful brown soil, and pressed his lips rapturously to the bosom of Earth, his mother. The wonderful hues of the autumn deepened in their silent rapidity, until the ruthless winter was come. Then the wayfarer persuaded an old shepherd to give him his shawl, and clad therein, and moving ever upon the peaks of the mountains, he came into the north. And there he learned many of the cunning but simple arts of these wise mountain peoples--those hardy children who wrested but a reluctant nourishment from the bare ground. It was here that, driven by the stress of winter, the wayfarer shared the hospitality of the fisherman’s hut, the ploughman’s byre, and the rude hearth of the crofter and the shepherd. It was in these altitudes that he renewed the garments for his back and the shoes for his feet. His scant store of pieces of silver had been consumed long ago, but, like one of his kin in a remote age, he did not fear to beg his bread from door to door. Now and again he would requite his hosts, who asked nought in return, as he sat in the chimney-place, warmed by a fire of peats and a basin of food, with wonderful tales out of the past, and glorious stories of the youth of the world. And these he would clothe in such wise that the simple hearts of his friends would swell with gladness. He did not fear the snow in the dales, the ice in the burns, nor the barren and implacable wastes which confronted him everywhere. Many and curious were the deeds he performed, strange were the sights that he witnessed. He made acquaintance with the red deer, and the mountain sheep, and the fowls of the moorland; he learned to speak every man in his own tongue; and never once in all these vicissitudes, although he had no piece of silver in his coat, did he suffer denial.