and here and there the patches of green colour where trees and bushes had taken root.  How wonderful it seemed to Martin that evening standing there in the wide green plain, the level sun at his back shining on his naked body, making him look like a statue of a small boy carved in whitest marble or alabaster.  Then, to make the sight he gazed on still more enchanting, just as the sun went down the colour of the hills changed from stone blue to a purple that was like the purple of ripe plums and grapes, only more beautiful and bright.  In a few minutes the purple colour faded away and the hills grew shadowy and dark.  It was too late in the day, and he was too tired to walk further.  He was very hungry and thirsty too, and so when he had found a few small white partridge-berries and had made a poor supper on them, he gathered some dry grass into a little heap, and lying down in it, was soon in a sound sleep.

It was not until the late afternoon next day that Martin at last got to the foot of the hill, or mountain, and looking up he saw it like a great wall of stone above him, with trees and bushes and trailing vines growing out of the crevices and on the narrow ledges of the rock.  Going some distance he came to a place where he could ascend, and here he began slowly walking upwards.  At first he could hardly contain his delight where everything looked new and strange, and here he found some very beautiful flowers; but as he toiled on he grew more tired and hungry at every step, and then, to make matters worse, his legs began to pain so that he could hardly lift them.  It was a curious pain which he had never felt in his sturdy little legs before in all his wanderings.

Then a cloud came over the sun, and a sharp wind sprang up that made him shiver with cold:  then followed a shower of rain; and now Martin, feeling sore and miserable, crept into a cavity beneath a pile of overhanging rocks for shelter.  He was out of the rain there, but the wind blew in on him until it made his teeth chatter with cold.  He began to think of his mother, and of all the comforts of his lost home—­the bread and milk when he was hungry, the warm clothing, and the soft little bed with its snowy white coverlid in which he had slept so sweetly every night.

“O mother, mother!” he cried, but his mother was too far off to hear his piteous cry.

When the shower was over he crept out of his shelter again, and with his little feet already bleeding from the sharp rocks, tried to climb on.  In one spot he found some small, creeping, myrtle plants covered with ripe white berries, and although they had a very pungent taste he ate his fill of them, he was so very hungry.  Then feeling that he could climb no higher, he began to look round for a dry, sheltered spot to pass the night in.  In a little while he came to a great, smooth, flat stone that looked like a floor in a room, and was about forty yards wide:  nothing grew on it except some small tufts of grey lichen;