In measuring himself with the world of 'Shirley' or of Dickens, he began to realise the problem of his own life with a singular keenness and clearness.

Then--last of all--the record of Franklin's life,--of the steady rise of the ill-treated printer's devil to knowledge and power--filled him with an urging and concentrating ambition, and set his thoughts, endowed with a new heat and nimbleness, to the practical unravelling of a practical case.
They reached home again early on a May day.

As he and Reuben, driving their new sheep, mounted the last edge of the moor which separated them from home, the Kinder Valley lay before them, sparkling in a double radiance of morning and of spring.

David lingered a minute or two behind his uncle.

What a glory of light and freshness in the air--what soaring larks--what dipping swallows! And the scents from the dew-steeped heather--and the murmur of the blue and glancing stream! The boy's heart went out to the valley--and in the same instant he put it from him.