and sharpened a-top into six facets. Borrowing one of
Cousin George's hammers, I soon filled a little box with these gems,
which even my mother and aunt were content to admire, as what of old
used, they said, to be called Bristol diamonds, and set in silver
brooches and sleeve buttons. Further, within less than a hundred yards
of the cottage, I found a lively little stream, brown, but clear as a
cairngorm of the purest water, and abounding, as I soon ascertained, in
trout, lively and little like itself, and gaily speckled with scarlet.
It wound through a flat, dank meadow, never disturbed by the plough; for
it had been a burying-ground of old, and flat undressed stones lay thick
amid the rank grass. And in the lower corner, where the old turf-wall
had sunk into an inconspicuous mound, there stood a mighty tree, all
solitary, for its fellows had long before disappeared, and so
hollow-hearted in its corrupt old age, that though it still threw out
every season a mighty expanse of foliage, I was able to creep into a
little chamber in its trunk, from which I could look out through
circular openings where boughs once had been, and listen, when a sudden
shower came sweeping down the glen, to the pattering of the rain-drops
amid the leaves. The valley of the Gruids was perhaps not one of the
finest or most beautiful of Highland valleys, but it was a very
admirable place after all; and amid its woods, and its rocks, and its
tomhans, and at the side of its little trouting stream, the weeks passed
delightfully away.

My cousin William, the merchant, had, as I have said, many guests; but
they were all too grand to take any notice of me. There was, however,
one delightful man, who was said to know a great deal about rocks and
stones, that, having heard of my fine large crystals, desired to see
both them and the boy who had found them; and I was admitted to hear him
talk about granites, and marbles, and metallic veins, and the gems that
lie hid among the mountains in nooks and crannies. I am afraid I would
not now deem him a very accomplished mineralogist: I remember enough of
his conversation to conclude that he knew but little, and that little
not very correctly: but not before Werner or Hutton could I have bowed
down with a profounder reverence. He spoke of the marbles of Assynt--of
the petrifactions of Helmsdale and Brora--of shells and plants embedded
in solid rocks, and of forest trees converted into stone; and my ears
drank i