CHAPTER VI
THE COMING OF A PROPHET
Another year passed, and Robert was now eleven years of age. Though full
of hardship, hunger and poverty, yet they were not altogether unhappy
years for him. There were joys which he would not have liked to have
missed, and in later life he looked back upon them always through a mist
of memory that sometimes bordered on tears.
He had grown "in wisdom and stature," and gave promise of being a fine
sturdy boy; but lately it had been borne in upon him that no one seemed
just to look at things from his point of view. He was alluded to as "a
strange laddie," and the gulf of misunderstanding seemed to grow wider
every day. Old Granny Frame, the "howdie-wife" of the village, always
declared that he would be a great man, but others just took it for
granted that he would never see things as they saw them.
He was already too serious for a boy, and his joys were not the joys of
other children. Sensitive, and in a measure proudly reserved, he took
more and more to the moors and the hills. All day sometimes he roved
over them, and at other times he would lie motionless but happy, for the
moor always understood.
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