he was trying to serve, owing to his awkward, ungainly ways.  I suppose I was a clever lad; at any rate, I always got plenty of praise; and was, as we called it, the cock of the school.  The schoolmaster said I could learn anything I chose, but my father, who had no great learning himself, saw little use in much for me, and took me away betimes, and kept me with him about the farm.  Gregory was made into a kind of shepherd, receiving his training under old Adam, who was nearly past his work.  I think old Adam was almost the first person who had a good opinion of Gregory.  He stood to it that my brother had good parts, though he did not rightly know how to bring them out; and, for knowing the bearings of the Fells, he said he had never seen a lad like him.  My father would try to bring Adam round to speak of Gregory’s faults and shortcomings; but, instead of that, he would praise him twice as much, as soon as he found out what was my father’s object.

One winter-time, when I was about sixteen, and Gregory nineteen, I was sent by my father on an errand to a place about seven miles distant by the road, but only about four by the Fells.  He bade me return by the road, whichever way I took in going, for the evenings closed in early, and were often thick and misty; besides which, old Adam, now paralytic and bedridden, foretold a downfall of snow before long.  I soon got to my journey’s end, and soon had done my business; earlier by an hour, I thought, than my father had expected, so I took the decision of the way by which I would return into my own hands, and set off back again over the Fells, just as the first shades of evening began to fall.  It looked dark and gloomy enough; but everything was so still that I thought I should have plenty of time to get home before the snow came down.  Off I set at a pretty quick pace.  But night came on quicker.  The right path was clear enough in the day-time, although at several points two or three exactly similar diverged from the same place; but when there was a good light, the traveller was guided by the sight of distant objects,—­a piece of rock,—­a fall in the ground—­which were quite invisible to me now.  I plucked up a brave heart, however, and took what seemed to me the right road.  It was wrong, nevertheless, and led me whither I knew not, but to some wild boggy moor where the solitude seemed painful, intense, as if never footfall of man had come thither to break the silence.  I tried to shout—­with the dimmest possible hope of being heard—­rather to reassure myself by the sound of my own voice; but my voice came husky and short, and yet it dismayed me; it seemed so weird and strange, in that noiseless expanse of black darkness.  Suddenly the air was filled thick with dusky flakes, my face and hands were wet with snow.  It cut me off from the slightest knowledge of where I was, for I lost every idea of the direction from which I had come, so that I could not even retrace my steps; it hemmed me in, thicker,