We all grow on somebody's grave.

So as the years draw on toward the Biblical limit, the inclination to look back, and to tell some sort of story of what one has seen, grows upon most of us.

My grandmother made her home at Fox How under the shelter of the fells, with her four daughters, the youngest of whom was only eight when their father died.

Every man is bound to leave a story better than he found it.

But the mind travels far - and mysteriously - in sleep.

As far as intellectual training was concerned, my nine years from seven to sixteen were practically wasted.

In this choice, as I look back over more than half a century, I can only follow - and trust - the same sort of instinct that one follows in the art of fiction.