it can be made to hold-that bright bend of the river-a silver bow-and that white-sanded, shelly, shingly shore at Loch-Etive Head, on which a troop of Tritons are "charging with all their chivalry," still driven back and still returning, to the sound of trumpets, of "flutes and soft recorders," from the sea. On the table, all strewn and scattered “in confusion worse confounded," round the Cask, which

"dilated stands

Like Teneriffe or Atlas unremoved,"

of Glenlivet! Proud is that round to court his shade. That twenty-pound Salmon lies beneath it even as yesterday he lay beneath the cliff, while a column of light falls from him on that Grouse-Pie. Is not that Ham beautiful in the calm consciousness of his protection? That Tongue mutely eloquent in his praise? Tap him with your knuckles, tenderly as if you loved him—and that with all your heart and soul you do-and is not the response firm as from the trunk of the gnarled oak? He is yet "Virgin of Proserpina"-" by Jove" he is; what "buttery touches" might be given to the no wanton lip has ever touched his mouth so chaste; so knock out the bung, and let us hear -“reliquias Danaum atque inmitis Achillei!" him gurgle. With diviner music does he fill Then the camp-beds tidily covered and arrangthe pitcher, and with a diviner liquidity of lighted along their own department of the circlethan did ever Naiad from fount of Helicon or quaint dresses hanging from loops, all the vaCastaly, pour into classic urn gracefully up- rious apparelling of hunter, shooter, fisher, and lifted by Grecian damsel to her graceful head, forester-rods, baskets, and nets occupying and borne away, with a thanksgiving hymn, their picturesque division-fowling-pieces, to her bower in the olive-grove. double and single, rejoicing through the oilsmooth brownness of their barrels in the exquisite workmanship of a Manton and a Lancaster-American rifles, with their stocks more richly silver-chased than you could have thought within reach of the arts in that young and prosperous land-duck-guns, whose for midable and fatal length had in Lincolnshire often swept the fens-and on each side of the door, a brass carronade on idle hours to awaken the echoes-sitting erect on their hurdies, deerhound, greyhound, lucher, pointer, setter, spaniel, varmint, and though last, not least, O'Bronte watching Christopher with his steadfast eyes, slightly raised his large hanging triangular ears, his Thessalian bull dewlaps betokening keen anxiety to be off and away to the mountain, and with a full view of the white star on his coal-black breast,

All eggs are good eating; and 'tis a vulgar heresy which hold that those laid by sea-fowl have a fishy taste. The egg of the Sea-mew is exceeding sweet; so is that of the Gull. Pleasant is even the yolk of the Cormorant in the north of England ycleped the Scarth, and in the Lowlands of Scotland the Black Byuter. Try a Black Byuter's egg, my dear boy; for though not newly laid, it has since May been preserved in butter, and is as fresh as a daisy after a shower. Do not be afraid of stumbling on a brace of embryo Black Byuters in the interior of the globe, for by its weight we pronounce it an egg in no peril of parturition. You may now smack your lips, loud as if you were smacking your palms, for that yellow morsel was unknown to Vitellius. Don't crush the shell, but throw it into the Etive, that the Fairies may find it at night, and go dancing in the fragile but buoyant canoe, in fits of small shrill laughter, along with the foam-bells over the ebbtide Rapids above Connal's raging Ferry.

The salmon is in shivers, and the grouse-pie

has vanished like a dream.

"So fades, so languishes, grows dim, and dies, All that this world is proud of!"

"Plaided and plumed in their Tartan array,"

our three chosen Highlanders, chosen for their strength and their fleetness from among the prime Children of the Mist-and Tickler the Tall, who keeps growing after threescore and ten like a stripling, and leaves his mark within a few inches of the top of the pole, arrayed in tights of Kendal green, bright from the skylight of the inimitable Vallance or the matchless Williams-green too his vest, and green also his tunic-while a green feather in a green bonnet dances in its airy splendour, and gold button-holes give at once lustre and relief to the glowing verdure, (such was Little John, when arrayed in all his glory, to walk behind Robin Hood and Maid Marian, as they glided from tree to tree, in wait for the fallow-deer in merry Sherwood,)-North in his Quaker garb

Only a goose remains! and would that he too were gone to return no more; for he makes us an old man. No tradition survives in the Glen of the era at which he first flourished. He seems to have belonged to some tribe of the Anseres now extinct; and as for his own single individual self, our senses tell us, in a language not to be misinterpreted, that he must have become defunct in the darkness of antiquity. But nothing can be too old for a devil-so at sup--Quaker-like all but in cuffs and flaps, which, per let us rectify him in Cayenne.

Oh! for David Wilkie, or William Simpson, (while we send Gibb to bring away yonder Shieling and its cliff,) to paint a picture-coloured, if possible, from the life-of the Interior of our airy Pyramid. Door open, and perpendicular canvas walls folded up-that settled but cloudy sky, with here its broad blue fields, and there its broad blue glimpsing glades-this greensward mound in the midst of a wilderness of rock-strewn hether-as much of that one mountain, and as many of those others, as

when he goes to the Forest, are not-North, with a figure combining in itself all the strength of a William Penn, sans its corpulency, all the agility of a Tem Belcher with far more than a Jem Belcher's bottom-with a face exhibiting in rarest union all the philosophy of a Bacon, the benevolence of a Howard, the wisdom of a Wordsworth, the fire of a Byron, the gnosticity of a John Bee, and the up-to-trappishness com. bined not only with perfect honesty, but with honour bright, of the Sporting Editor of Bell's Life in London-and then, why if Wilkie or

Simpson fail in making a GEM of all that, they are not the men of genius we took them for, that is all, and the art must be at a low ebb indeed in these kingdoms.

ducks, for example, to dive if they can, and get out of the way of mischief. It is giving birds a chance for their lives, and is it not ungenerous to grudge it? When our gun goes to our shoulder, that chance is but small; for with double-barrel Brown Bess, it is but a word and a blow, the blow first, and long before you could say Jack Robinson, the gorcock plays thud on the heather. But we beg leave to set the question at rest for ever by one single clencher. We have killed fifty birds-grouse -at fifty successive shots-one bird only to the shot. And mind, not mere pouts-cheepersfor we are no chicken-butchers-but all thump

the parents themselves likewise; not one of which fell out of bounds, (to borrow a phrase from the somewhat silly though skilful pastime of pigeon-shooting,) except one that suddenly soared halfway up to the moon, and then

Well, our Tail has taken wings to itself and flown away with Dugald Dhu and Donald Roy; and we, with Hamish Bhan, with Ponto, Piro, Basta, and O'Bronte, are left by ourselves in the Tent. Before we proceed farther, it may not be much amiss to turn up our little fingers -yestreen we were all a leetle opstropelousand spermaceti is not a more "sovereign remedy for an inward bruise," than is a hair from the dog's tail that bit you an antidote to any pus that produces rabies in the shape of hy-ers-cocks and hens as big as their parents, and drophobia. Fill up the quech, Hamish! a caulker of Milbank can harm no man at any hour of the day-at least in the Highlands. Sma' Stell, Hamish-assuredly Sma' Stell! Ere we start, Hamish, play us a Gatheringand then a Pibroch. The Campbells are coming" is like a storm from the mountain sweeping Glen-More, that roars beneath the bastening hurricane with all its woods. No earthquake like that which accompanies the trampling of ten thousand men. So, round that shoulder, Hamish-and away for a mile up the Glen-then, turning on your heel, blow till proud might be the mother that bore you; and from the Tent-mouth Christopher will keep smart fire from his Pattereroes, answered by all the echoes. Hamish-indeed

"The dun-deer's hide

On swifter foot was never tied—”

"Into such strange vagaries fell

As he would dance," and tumbled down stone-dead into a loch. Now, what more could have done a detonator in the hands of the devil himself? Satan might have shot as well, perhaps, as Christopher North-better we defy him; and we cannot doubt that his detonator-given to him in a present, we believe, by Joe Manton-is a prime article-one of the best ever manufactured on the percussion system. But what more could he have done? When we had killed our fiftieth bird in style, we put it to the Christian reader, would not the odds have been for even now as that cloud-rather thunderous six to four on the flint? And would not Satan, in his aspect-settles himself over the Tent- at the close of the match, ten birds behind perere five minutes have elapsed-a mile off is haps, and with a bag shamefully rich in poor the sullen sound of the bagpipe!-music pouts, that would have fallen to the ground which, if it rouse you not when heard among had he but thrown salt on their tails, have the mountains, may you henceforth confine looked excessively sheepish? True, that in yourself to the Jew's harp. Ay, here's a clay- rain or snow the percussion-lock will act, from more-let us fling away the scabbard-and in its detonating power, more correctly than the upon the front rank of the bayoneted muskets, common flint-lock, which, begging its pardon, till the Saxon array reels, or falls just where will then often not act at all; but that is its it has been standing, like a swathe of grass. only advantage, and we confess a great one, So swept of old the Highlanders-shepherds especially in Scotland, where it is a libel on and herdsmen-down the wooded cliffs of the the country to say that it always rains, for it pass of Killiekrankie, till Mackay's red-coats almost as often snows. However, spite of lay redder in blood among the heather, or wind and weather, we are faithful to flint; nor passed away like the lurid fragments of a shall any newfangled invention, howsoever coud. The Campbell's are coming"-and we ingenious, wean us from our First Love. will charge with the heroes in the van. The Let not youthful or middle-aged sportsmen whole clan is maddening along the Moor-and-in whose veins the blood yet gallops, canters, Maccallum More himself is at their head. But we beseech you, O'Bronte! not to look so like a ion-and to hush in your throat and breast that truly leonine growl-for after all, 'tis but a bagpipe with ribands

*Streaming like meteors to the troubled air," and all our martial enthusiasm has evaporated in-wind.

But let us inspect Brown Bess. Till sixty, we used a single barrel. At seventy we took to a double-but dang detonators-we stick to the flint. "Flint," says Colonel Hawker, shoots strongest into the bird." A percussion-gun is quicker, but flint is fast enough; and it does, indeed, argue rather a confusion than a rapidity of ideas, to find fault with lightning for being too slow. With respect to the flash in the pan, it is but a fair warning to

or trots-despise us, Monsieur Vieillard, in whose veins the blood creeps like a wearied pedestrian at twilight hardly able to hobble into the wayside inn-for thus so long preferring the steel-pen to the steel barrel (the style of both is equally polished)-our Bramah to our Manton. Those two wild young fellows, Tickler and the Admiral, whose united ages amount to little more than a century and a half, are already slaughtering their way along the mountain side, the one on Bauchaille Etive, and the other on the Black Mount. But we love not to commit murder long before meri dian-" gentle lover of Nature" as we are; so, in spite of the scorn of the more passionate sportsman, we shall continue for an hour or two longer inditing, ever and anon lifting our eyes from whitey-brown paper to whitey-blue

sky, from memorandum-book to mountain, from inkbottle to loch, and delight ourselves, and perchance a few thousand others, by a waking-dream description of Glen-Etive.

"Tis a vast Glen. Not one single human dwelling any where spec-like on the river-winding plain-or nest-like among the brushwood knolls-or rock-like among the fractured cliffs far up on the mountain region do our eyes behold, eager as they are to discover some symptoms of life. Two houses we know to be in the solitude-ay, two-one of them near the head of the Loch, and the other near the head of the Glen-but both distant from this our Tent, which is pitched between, in the very heart of the Moor. We were mistaken in saying that Dalness is invisible-for yonder it then away with you ere the rainbow fadelooms in sullen light, and before we have fin- away, we beseech you, to the wild shores of ished the sentence, may have again sunk into Lochan-a-Lúrich. But you would rather see a the moor. Ay, it is gone-for lights and sha- storm, and hear some Highland thunder? dows coming and going, we know not whence There is one at this moment on Unimore, and nor whither, here travel all day long-the Cruachlia growls to Meallanuir, till the catasole tenants-very ghost-like-and seeming-racts of Glashgour are dumb as the dry rocks ly in their shiftings embued with a sort of dim of Craig-Teōnan. uncertain life. How far off from our Tent

rald, and mountains on mountains of amethyst, and streams on streams of silver; and, so help us Heaven!-for with these eyes we have seen them, a thousand and a thousand timesat sunrise and sunset, rivers on rivers of gold. What kind of climate? All kinds, and all kinds at once-not merely during the same season, but the same hour. Suppose it three o'clock of a summer afternoon-you have but to choose your weather. Do you desire a close, sultry, breathless gloom? You have it in the stifling dens of Ben-Anéa, where lions might breed. A breezy coolness, with a sprinkling of rain? Then open your vest to the green light in the dewy vales of Benlūra. Lochs look lovely in mist, and so thinks the rainbow

its cry.

may be the Loch? Miles and silently as snow are seen to break the waves along the shore, while beyond them hangs, in aerial haze, the great blue water. How far off from our Tent may be the mountains at the head of the Glen? Miles-for though that speck in the sky into which they upheave their mighty altitudes, be doubtless an eagle, we cannot hear What giants are these right opposite our Pyramid? Co-grim chieftain—and his Tail. What an assemblage of thunder-riven cliffs! This is what may be well called-Nature on a grand scale. And then, how simple! We begin to feel ourselves-in spite of all we can do to support our dignity by our pride-a mighty small and insignificant personage. We are about six feet high-and every body around us about four thousand. Yes, that is the Four Thousand Feet Club! We had no idea that in any situation we could be such dwindled dwarfs, such perfect pigmies. Our Tent is about as big as a fir-cone-and Christopher North an insect!

In those regions we were, when a boy, initiated into the highest mysteries of the Highlands. No guide dogged our steps-as well might a red-deer have asked a cur to show him the Forest of Braemar, or Beniglo-an eagle where best to build his eyry have advised with the Glasgow Gander. O heavens! how we were bewildered among the vast objects that fed that delirium of our boyhood! We dimly recog nised faces of cliffs wearing dreadful frowns; blind though they looked, they seemed sensible of our approach; and we heard one horrid monster mutter, "What brings thee here, infatuated Pech-begone!" At his impotent malice we could not choose but smile, and shook our staff at the blockhead, as since at many a greater blockhead even than he have we shook-and more than shook our Crutch. But as through "pastures green and quiet waters by," we pursued, from sunrise to sunset, our uncompanioned way, some sweet spot, surrounded by heather, and shaded by fern, would woo us to lie down on its bosom, and enjoy a visionary sleep! Then it was that What a wild world of clouds all over that the mountains confidentially told us their vast central wilderness of Northern Argyle-names-and we got them all by heart; for shire lying between Cruachan and Melnatorran each name characterized its owner by some of -Corryfinuarach and Ben Slarive a prodigious his peculiar and prominent qualities—as if land! defying description, and in memory re- they had been one and all christened by poets sembling not realities, but like fragments of baptizing them from a font tremendous dreams. Is it a sterile region? Very. In places nothing but stones. Not a blade of grass-not a bent of heather-not even moss. And so they go shouldering up into the sky-enormous masses-huger than churches or ships. And sometimes not unlike such and other structures-all huddled together -yet never jostling, so far as we have seen; and though often overhanging, as if the wind might blow them over with a puff, steadfast in the storm that seems rather to be an earthquake, and moving not a hair's-breadth, while all the shingly sides of the mountains-you know shingle-with an inconstant clatter-burryskurry-seem to be breaking up into debris.

Is that the character of the whole region? No, you darling; it has vales on vales of eme

"Translucent, pure,

With touch ethereal of heaven's fiery rod." O happy pastor of a peaceful flock! Thou hast long gone to thy reward! One-twothree-four successors hast thou had in that manse-(now it too has been taken down and the plough gone over it)-and they all did their duty; yet still is thy memory fragrant in the glen; for deeds like thine "smell sweet, and blossom in the dust!" Under heaven, we owed our life to thy care of us in a brain fever. Sometimes thy face would grow grave, never angry, at our sallies-follies-call them what you will, but not sins. And methinks we hear the mild old man somewhat mournfully saying, “Mad boy! out of gladness often cometh grief-out of mirth misery; but our prayers,

when thou leavest us, shall be, that never, | and shall we ever see her more?) has been never, may such be thy fate!" Were those often pleased to say that we excel. But let us prayers heard in heaven and granted on earth? off to the Moor. Piro! Ponto! Basta! to your We ask our heart in awe, but its depths are paws, and O'Bronte, unfurl your tail to heaven. silent, and make no response. Pointers! ye are a noble trio. White, O Ponto! art thou as the foam of the sea. Piro! thou tan of all tans! red art thou as the dun-deer's hide, and fleet as he while thou rangest the mountain brow, now hid in heather, and now re-appearing over the rocks. Waur hawk, Basta!-for finest-scented through be thy scar let nostrils, one bad trick alone hast thou; and whenever that gray wing glances from some pillar-stone in the wilderness, headlong goest thou, O lawless negro! But behave thyself to

or sun herself on the cliff. As for thee, O'Bronte! the sable dog with the star-bright breast, keep thou like a serf at our heels, and when our course lies over the fens and marshes, thou mayst sweep like a hairy hurricane among the flappers, and haply to-day grip the old drake himself, and with thy fan-like tail proudly spread in the wind, deposit at thy master's feet, with a smile, the monstrous mallard.

But in what direction shall we go, callantstowards what airt shall we turn our faces? Over yonder cliffs shall we ascend, and descend into Glen-Creran, where the stony re

But is it our intention to sit scribbling here all day? Our fancy lets our feet enjoy their sinecure, and they stretch themselves out in indolent longitude beneath the Tent-table, while we are settled in spirit, a silent thought, on the battlements of our cloud-castle on the summit of Cruachan. What a prospect! Our cloud-castle rests upon a foundation of granite precipices; and down along their hundred chasms, from which the eye recoils, we look on Loch-Etive bearing on its bosom stationary-day, Basta! and let the kestrel unheeded sail so it seems in the sunshine-one snow-white sail! What brings the creature there-and on what errand may she be voyaging up the uninhabited sea-arm that stretches away into the uninhabited mountains? Some poet, perhaps, steers her-sitting at the helm in a dream, and allowing her to dance her own way, at her own will, up and down the green glens and hills of the foam-crested waves-a swell rolling in the beauty of light and music for ever attendant on her, as the Sea-mew-for so we choose to name her pursues her voyage-now on water, and now, as the breezes drop, in the air-elements at times undistinguishable, as the sha-gions that the ptarmigan love melts away into dows of the clouds and of the mountains mingle their imagery in the sea. Oh! that our head, like that of a spider, were all studded with eyes that our imagination, sitting in the "palace of the soul," (a noble expression, borrowed or stolen by Byron from Waller,) might see all at once all the sights from centre to circumference, as if all rallying around her for her own delight, and oppressing her with the poetry of nature-a lyrical, and elegiac, an epic, or a tragic strain. Now the bright blue water-gleams enchain her vision, and are felt to constitute the vital, the essential spirit of the whole-Loch Awe land-serpent, large as serpent of the sea, lying asleep in the sun, with his burnished skin all bedropt with scales of silver and of gold-the lands of Lorn, mottled and speckled with innumerous lakelets, where fancy sees millions of water-lilies riding at anchor in bays where the breezes have fallen asleep-Oban, splendid among the splendours of that now almost motionless mediterranean, the mountain-loving Linnhe Loch—Jura, Isla, Colonsay, and nameless other islands, floating far and wide away on-on to Coll and Tiree, drowned beneath the faint horizon. But now all the eyes in our spider-head are lost in one blaze of undistinguishable glory; for the whole Highlands of Scotland are up in their power against us-rivers, lochs, seas, islands, cliffs, clouds, and mountains. The pen drops from our hand, and here we are-not on the is nothing to the austerity of the noiselessness battlements of the air-palace on the summit of that prevails under the shadow of Unimore Cruachan-but sitting on a tripod or three- and Attchorachen, with their cliffs on which legged stool at the mouth of our Tent, with our the storms have engraven strange hieroglyphiMS. before us, and at our right hand a quech | cal inscriptions, which, could but we read them of Glenlivet, fresh drawn from yonder ten-gal-wisely, would record the successive ages of the lon cask-and here's to the health of "Honest Earth, from the hour when fire or flood first men and bonny lasses" all over the globe. moulded the mountains, down to the very mʊ

|

miles of the grousey heather, which, ere we near the salmon-haunted Loch so beautiful, loses itself in woods that mellow all the heights of Glen Ure and Fasnacloigh with silvan shades, wherein the cushat coos, and the roe glides through the secret covert? Or shall we away up by Kinloch-Etive, and Melnatorran, and Mealgayre, into the Solitude of Streams, that from all their lofty sources down to the fardistant Loch have never yet brooked, nor will they ever brook, the bondage of bridges, save of some huge stone flung across some chasm, or trunk of a tree-none but trunks of trees there, and all dead for centuries-that had sunk down where it grew, and spanned the flood that eddies round it with a louder music? Wild region! yet not barren; for there are cattle on a thousand hills, that, wild as the very red-deer, toss their heads as they snuff the feet of rarest stranger, and form round him in a half-alarmed and half-threatening crescent. There flocks of goats-outliers from Dalness —may be seen as if following one another on the very air, along the lichen-stained cliffs that frown down unfathomed abysses-and there is frequent heard the whirring of the gorcock's wing, and his gobble gathering together his brood, scattered by the lightning that in its season volleys through the silence, else far deeper than that of death;-for the silence of death-that is of a churchyard filled with tombs

So much for description-an art in which ment that we are speaking, and with small the Public (God bless her, where is she now-steel-hammer roughening the edges of our

flints that they may fail not to murder. Or shall we away down by Armaddy, where the Fox-Hunter dwells-and through the woods of Inverkinglass and Achran, "double, double, toil and trouble" overcome the braes of Benanea and Mealcopucaich, and drop down like two unwearied eagles into Glen-Scrae, with a peep in the distance of the young tower of Dalmally, and the old turrets of Kilchurn? Rich and rare is the shooting-ground, Hamish, which by that route lies between this our Tent and the many tarns that freshen the wildernesses of Lochanancrioch. Say the word-tip the wink-tongue on your cheek-up with your forefinger-and we shall go; for hark, Hamish, our chronometer chimes eight-a long day is yet before us-and what if we be benighted? We have a full moon and plenty

of stars.

All these are splendid schemes-but what say you, Hamish, to one less ambitious, and better adapted to Old Kit? Let us beat all the best bits down by Armaddy-the Forge-Gleno, and Inveraw. We may do that well in some six or seven hours-and then let us try that famous salmon-cast nearest the mansion

(you have the rods?)—and if time permit, an hour's trolling in Loch Awe, below the Pass of the Brander, for one of those giants that have immortalized the names of a Maule, a Goldie, and a Wilson. Mercy on us, Shelty, what a beard! You cannot have been shaved since Whitsunday-and never saw we such lengthy love-locks as those dangling at your heels. But let us mount, old Surefoot-mulish in naught but an inveterate aversion to all stumbling. And now for the heather! But are you sure, gents, that we are on?

And has it come to this! Where is the grandson of the desert-born?

snorting pause, over the miry meadows-tantivy !-tantivy !-away! away! away!

Oh! son of a Rep! were not those glorious days? But Time has laid his finger on us both, Filho; and never more must we two be seen by the edge of the cover,

"When first the hunter's startling horn is heard Upon the golden hills."

"Tis the last learned and highest lesson of Wisdom, Filho, in man's studious obedience to Nature's laws-to know when to stop in his career. Pride, Passion, Pleasure, all urge him on; while Prudence, Propriety, Peace, cry halt! halt! halt! That mandate we have timeously obeyed; and having, unblamed we hope, and blameless, carried on the pastimes of youth into manhood, and even through the prime of manhood to the verge of age-on that verge, after some few farewell vagaries up and down the debatable land, we had the resolution to drop our bridle-hand, to unloosen the spurs from our heels, and to dismount from the stateliest and swiftest steed, Filho, that ever wafted mortal man over moor and mountain like a storm-driven cloud.

And that

You are sure we are on, Hamish? he will not run away? Come, come, Surefoot, none of your funking! A better mane for holding on by we could not imagine. Pure Shelty you say, Hamish? From his ears we should have suspected his grandfather of having been at least a Zebra.

FLIGHT SECOND-THE COVES OF
CRUACHAN.

"Tis

COMMA-semicolon-colon-full-point! All three scent-struck into attitude steady as stones. Thirty years ago, and thou Filho da Puta That is beautiful. Ponto straight as a rodwert a flyer! A fencer beyond compare! Piro in a slight curve-and Basta a perfect Dost thou remember how, for a cool five semicircle. O'Bronte! down on your marrowhundred, thou clearedst yon canal in a style bones. But there is no need, Hamish, either that rivalled that of the red-deer across the for hurry or haste. On such ground, and on chasms of Cairngorm? All we had to do, was such a day, the birds will lie as if they were to hold hard and not ride over the hounds, asleep. Hamish, the flask!-not the powderwhen, running breast-high on the rear of Rey-flask, you dotterel-but the Glenlivet. nard, the savage pack wakened the welkin thus we always love to steady our hand for with the tumultuous hubbub of their death-cry, the first shot. It gives a fine feeling to the and whipper-in and huntsmen were flogging forefinger. on their faltering flight in vain through fields Ha! the heads of the old cock and hen, like and forests flying behind thy heels that glanced snakes, above the heather-motionless, but and glittered in the frosty sunshine. What with glancing eyes-and preparing for the steed like thee in all Britain at a steeple chase? spring. Whirr-whirr-whirr-bang-bang Thy hoofs scorned the strong stubble, and tapsillery-tapsalteery-thud-thud-thud! skimmed the deep fallows, in which all other Old cock and old hen both down, Hamish. horses-heavy there as dragoons-seemed No mean omen, no awkward augury, of the fetlock-bound, or laboured on in staggerings, day's sport. Now for the orphan familysoil-sunk to the knees. Ditches dwindled marked ye them round beneath thy bounds, and rivulets were as rills; or if in flood they rudely overran their banks, into the spate plunged thy sixteen hands and a-half height, like a Polar monster leaping from an iceberg into the sea, and then lifting up thy small head and fine neck and high shoulder, like a Draco from the weltering waters, with a few proud pawings to which the recovered greensward rang, thy whole bold, bright-brown bulk reappeared on the bank, crested by old Christopher, and after one short

"The swelling instep of the mountain's foot?" "Faith and she's the teevil's nainsel-that is she-at the shutin'; for may I tine ma mull, and never pree sneeshin' mair, if she hae na richt and left murdered fowre o' the creturs!"

"Four!-why we only covered the old people; but if younkers will cross, 'tis their own fault that they bite the heather."-" They're a' fowre spewin', sir, except ane-and her's head's aff-and she's jumpin' about waur nor