He told me that he had learned everything alone. Driven from every village by stones and screams, he had hidden in a shed against the wall of a poor cottage, where a blind old man lived with his son and daughter. Through a chink he watched them for a year. He learned their language, he learned to read from three books he found in a wood, and he secretly cleared their path of snow and cut their firewood at night, so that they should think some good spirit helped them. He grew to love them. At last he went in and spoke to the blind man, who answered him kindly, but when the young people returned the son beat him and they fled the cottage the next day. That was the end of his one hope, and after it he began to hate.