It was a lovely morning in the first of summer. Donal Grant was descending a path on a hillside to the valley below -- a sheep-track of which he knew every winding as well as any boy. But he had never before gone down the hill with the feeling that he was not about to go up again.
He had set out early, so as to meet no one who might know him. He had his few possessions in a sack, and a long path ahead of him -- for he would find himself a place where he might find work that would be rewarding, and where there would be a library full of books for his hungry mind. His was a soul hungry after life -- not knowing where he might be, but intent on reaching it.
"How far are you going?" asks a minister he encounters on the road.
"As far as I can!" replies Donal.
George MacDonald (1824-1905) was the author of many evocative and moving novels of Scottish peasant life.