"
Then he was out of the window, dropped easily to the ground, and was
away to the moors. He ran a long way, until finding that he had not been
detected, he skirted a small wood, dug a hole in the soft moss, put in
the "tawse," and covered them up. There they may be lying to this day,
for no one ever learned from him where they were buried.
The spell of the moor took possession of him, and his wounded soul was
soon wrapped in the soft folds of its silence. The balm of its peace
comforted him, and brought ease and calmed the rebellion in his blood.
He was happy, forgetting that there ever had existed a schoolmaster, or
anything else unpleasant. Here he was free, and no one ever
misunderstood him. He gave pain to no one, and nothing ever hurt him
here.
He flung himself down among the rank gray grass and heather, while the
moor cock called to his mate in an agony of pleading passion, the
lapwing crooned upon a tuft of grass as she prepared a place for her
eggs, the whaup wheepled and twirled and cried in eerie alarm, the
plover sighed to a low white cloud wandering past; while the snipe and
the lark, the "mossie," the heather lintie, and the wandering, sighing
winds among the reeds and rushes of the swampy moss, all added their
notes to soothe and satisfy the little wounded spirit lying there on the
soft moorland.
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