Because
of this right, therefore, are to be found here and there little farms of
three or four fields a-piece, looking like islands, with the wide, open
common around them; and some miles away over the breezy uplands there is
even a little hamlet of these poor cottages, all belonging to the people
who dwell in them.
Many years ago, even many years before my story begins, a poor woman--who
was far worse off than a widow, for her husband had just been sentenced
to transportation for twenty-one years--strayed down to these mountains
upon her sorrowful way home to her native place. She had her only child
with her, a boy five years of age; and from some reason or other, perhaps
because she could not bear to go home in shame and disgrace, she sought
out a very lonely hiding-place among the hills, and with her own hands
reared rough walls of turf and stones, until she had formed such a rude
hut as would just give shelter to her and her boy. There they lived,
uncared for and solitary, until the husband came back, after suffering
his twenty-one years' punishment, and entered into a little spot of land
entirely his own.
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