The Life of Robert Louis Stevenson for Boys and Girls

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and called the 'witches' walk' from a game we used to play in it....
Even out of the 'witches' walk' you saw the Manse facing toward you,
with its back to the river and the wooded bank, and the bright
flower-plots and stretches of comfortable vegetables in front and on
each side of it; flower plots and vegetable borders, by the way, on
which it was almost death to set foot, and about which we held a curious
belief,--namely, that my grandfather went round and measured any
footprints that he saw, to compare the measurement at night with the
boots put out for brushing; to avoid which we were accustomed, by a
strategic movement of the foot to make the mark longer....

"So much for the garden; now follow me into the house. On entering the
door you had before you a stone paved lobby.... There stood a case of
foreign birds, two or three marble deities from India and a lily of the
Nile in a pot, and at the far end the stairs shut in the view. With how
many games of 'tig' or brick-building in the forenoon is the long low
dining room connected in my mind! The storeroom was a most voluptuous