nce a white house was seen embedded in the blue
mountains.

"Yonder's ta hoose," said the driver, as the party overtook the coach,
and resumed their places--the males on the top and the females inside.

"Oh, my dear! look! look!" cried Mr Sudberry, leaning over the side of
the coach; "there is our house--the white house--our Highland home!"

At this moment a growl of distant thunder was heard. It was followed by
a scream from Mrs Sudberry, and a cry of--

"You'd better send Jacky inside, my dear."

"Ah, he may as well remain where he is," replied Mr Sudberry, whose
imperfect hearing led him to suppose that his spouse had said, "Jacky's
inside, my dear!" whereas the real truth was that the boy was neither
out nor inside.

Master Jacky, be it known, had a remarkably strong will of his own.
During the journey he preferred an outside seat in all weathers. By
dint of much coaxing, his mother had induced him to get in beside her
for one stage; but he had made himself so insufferably disagreeable,
that the good lady was thereafter much more disposed to let him have his
own way. When the coach stopped, as we have described, Jacky got out,
and roundly asserted that he would never get in again.

When the attention of the party was occupied with the gorgeous scenery
at the extremity of the pass, Jacky, under a sudden impulse of
wickedness, crept stealthily into the copse that lined the road,
intending to give his parents a fright. In less than five minutes these
parents were galloping away at the rate of ten miles an hour, each happy
in the belief that the sweet boy was with the other.

Somewhat surprised at the prolonged and deathlike silence that reigned
around him, Jacky returned to the road, where he actually gasped with
horror on finding himself the solitary tenant of an apparently
uninhabited wilderness. Sitting down on a stone, he shut his eyes,
opened wide his mouth, and roared vehemently.

At the end of about five minutes he ventured to re-open his eyes. His
face instantly assumed an expression of abject terror, and the roar was
intensified into a piercing shriek when he beheld a fierce little black
cow staring at him within a yard of his face.

A drove of shaggy Highland cattle had come suddenly round a turn in the
pass while Jacky's eyes had been shut. They now filed slowly and
steadily past the transfixed boy, as if they were a regiment and he a
reviewing general. Each animal as it came up, stopped,