ire? Well, I came fra far ayant the braes o' Foudland. That's,
maybe, the way my mither's sae auldfarrent. There, ye see, I'm talkin'
Scotch, for the very thought of Foudland brings back my Scotch tongue. Ay,
dear lady, dear lady, my father was an honest crofter there. He owned a
bit farm and everything, and things went pretty well with us till death
tirled at the door-sneck and took poor father away to the mools. I was
only a callan o' some thirteen summers then, and when we had to leave the
wee croft and sell the cows we were fain to live in a lonely shieling on
the bare brae side, just a butt and a ben with a wee kailyard, and barely
enough land to grow potatoes and keep a little Shetland cowie. But, young
though I was, I could herd sheep--under a shepherd at first, but finally
all by myself. I'm not saying that wasn't a happy time. Oh, it was, lady!
it was! And many a night since then have I lain awake thinking about it,
till every scene of my boyhood's days rose up before me. I could see the
hills, green with the tints of spring, or crimson with the glorious
heather of autumn; see the braes yellow-tasselled with the golden broom
and fragrant with the blooming whins; see the glens and dells, the silver,
drooping birch-trees, the grand old waving pines, the wimpling burns, the
roaring linns and lochs asleep in the evening sunset. And see my mither's
shieling, too; and many a night have I lain awake to pray I might have her
near me once again.'

'And a kind God has answered that prayer!'

'Ay, Miss M'Crimman, and I'll have the sad satisfaction of one day closing
her een. Never mind, we do our duty here, and we'll all meet again in the
great "Up-bye." But, dear boys, to continue my story--if story I dare call
it. Not far from the hills where I used to follow Laird Glennie's sheep,
and down beside a bonnie wood and stream, was a house, of not much
pretension, but tenanted every year by a gentleman who used to paint the
hills and glens and country all round. They say he got great praise for
his pictures, and big prices as well. I used often to arrange my sheep and
dogs for him into what he would call picturesque groups and attitudes.
Then he painted them and me and dogs and all. He used to delight to listen
to my boyish story of adventure, and in return would tell me tales of
far-off lands he had been in, and about the Silver Land in particular.
Such stories actually fired my blood. He had sown the seeds of ambition in
m