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'Uncle?' I said again.

'Forgive me, Edgar,.' he said. 'I should not detain you. I have taken up enough of your time.' Still he did not stand, and once again looked down at the telescope.

'Does the telescope have a story?' I asked.

'Everything has a story.' Uncle Montague sighed. 'Everything and everyone. But, yes,.' he said, cradling the telescope in his hands. 'This does have a particular tale to tell. But it can wait for another time.'

I looked down at my uncle, who seemed suddenly older, and I had not the heart to leave him.

'Please tell me, sir,.' I said, sitting back down.

Uncle Montague smiled again.

'You may not thank me for telling you, Edgar.'

'Even so,.' I said. 'Please tell me. One last story, Uncle, and then I shall away home.'

'If you insist, Edgar,.' he said solemnly, returning to his seat by the fire. 'If you insist.'

Matthew Harter came to a halt beside the huge lichen-encrusted stone that stood beside the entrance to the sheepfold and turned to take one last look at his home.

He almost changed his mind there and then as he looked at the huddle of stone buildings that had been the only world he had known for his short life, save for the fells and lakes that surrounded them. Matthew had lived all his years in that wild and mountainous area of the north country they call Cumbria, his family's house sitting at the base of the hills that girded it around like fortress walls.

But it was this closed view of things that lay behind his creeping out of the family house that dawn, a pack on his back and a note left for his mother to cry over when she woke.

When he had spoken to his father of the curiosity he felt for what lay over the crag tops, his father had said, 'Son, we are like those sheep we tend. They lamb on a certain part of the fell, and to that part of the fell they will return when they grow old enough. They are bonded to the hills and so are we. That's the course that the Almighty has set for us. We're sheep farmers. We're hill folk and that's an end to it.'

And so it was for Matthew's father, but not for Matthew. He had looked to his grandfather on his mother's side for another point of view; for though his grandfather, like his mother, had been born in the very next valley, he had escaped. He had run away to sea.

Matthew's grandfather had returned to the Lakes stuffed full of stories and needed no encouragement to tell them. He was a fine storyteller and even finer when his tongue was oiled with whisky. He was an institution at the Old White Lion until his death in the lambing season that year.

The only death Matthew had experienced prior to that was of his favourite sheepdog, and it hit him hard. It was as if a safety rope attaching him to the outside world had been severed. With his grandfather's death, a whole world of possibilities seemed to die.

This was not to say that Matthew was particularly fond of the old man, or the old man of him. Matthew was only interested in the vistas his grandfather opened up to him.

When Matthew sobbed through the funeral service at the little granite and slate church high among the fells, the tears were for the loss of the stories, not the loss of the man. If anything, Matthew felt anger and resentment rather than sadness.

The tears were enough to convince his mother that though the boy had not seemed especially attached to her father, Matthew had obviously been terribly hurt by his death. A few days after the funeral she approached Matthew with a small parcel, which when unwrapped revealed a brass telescope.

'Father wanted you to have it,.' said his mother.

'He did?' said Matthew, intrigued to hear a lie on his mother's lips.

'Yes . . .' she said hesitantly. 'He thought you might like it. It went all over the world with him you know.'

Matthew held the telescope to his eye and was amazed to see the bracken beneath Brock Crag waving gently in the breeze as if it were only feet away, rather than the hundreds of yards away it actually was. His mother smiled at him and left him alone. It was at that instant Matthew decided