upon a sunny rock, Bruce
with his pointed nose comfortably across Dirk's rough, warm frill, and
Sneeshing curled himself up in the angle formed by the two dogs' bodies,
close up to and as much under Dirk's long hair as he could; while
Scoodrach seated himself on a huge block of black slate, which did not
belong to the place, but must have fallen from some vein high up the
gorge, and been brought down by wintry floods, a little way at a time,
during hundreds of years, till it lay jammed in among the great blocks
of granite like a chip in a basin of lumps of sugar. This piece of
slate suited Scoodrach's eye, and he took out his big knife and began to
sharpen it.

Long Shon took a little curly sheep's horn out of his pouch, and had a
pinch of snuff.

Tavish filled a dumpy black wooden pipe, and began to smoke; while
Kenneth, as he smilingly watched Max, hummed over Black Donald's bagpipe
tune, "The March of the Clan Mackhai."

"Well," said Kenneth at last, breaking the silence, through which came a
low, deep, humming roar, "what do you think of Dunroe?"

"Think!" cried Max, in a low, deep voice; "it's heavenly."

And he stood gazing up the narrow glen, with its intensely dark shadows
among the rocks, through which the brilliant sun-rays struck down,
making the raindrops which hung upon the delicate leaves of the pendent
birches glisten like diamonds.

For it was one beautiful series of pictures at which the lad gazed:
patches of vivid blue above, seen through the openings among the trees;
right below, the foaming river coming down in a hundred miniature falls;
silver-stemmed and ruddy-bronze birches rooting in the sides, and
sending their leaves and twigs hanging over like cascades of verdure;
pines and spruces rising up on all sides like pyramids of deep, dark
green; and everywhere the masses of rock glittering with crystals, and
clothed with mosses of the most vivid tints, and among whose crevices
the ferns threw up their pointed, softly-laced fronds.

The sunlight glanced down like sheaves of dazzling silver arrows; and
over the water, and softly riding down the glen, came soft, filmy clouds
of mist, so fine and delicate that they constantly faded into
invisibility; while every now and then there were passing glimpses of
colour appearing and disappearing over the rushing torrent, as if there
had been a rainbow somewhere up above--one which had broken up, and
these were its fragments being borne away.

"I nev