mple melodies of his race, its sad, sweet refrain
almost drowned in the roars of laughter called forth by a chalky-faced
clown, who appears to be not a compound of flesh, blood, and nerves like
ordinary mortals, but just a bundle of wire springs and india-rubber
balls.

The hobby-horses go round and round, with their ever-changing load, in
monotonous regularity. The switchback railway sways up and down to the
time of its own mechanical music, amid shrieks of delight and peals of
merriment; while youngsters yell aloud with excitement or fear as the
gaudily-painted gondolas swing them up higher and higher than before.

The noise is deafening. Between the cries of ice-cream vendors, the
high-pitched eloquence of medicine-men, peddlers, tired children, and
scolding mothers, it is well-nigh maddening. Still the crowd elbows and
jostles along, gradually growing noisier and denser. There they mingle
shoulder to shoulder, the squalid and the well-to-do, lads and lasses,
boys and girls, husbands and wives, grave and gay; while friendly
greetings are exchanged, light jests bandied as they move backwards and
forwards, intent upon the fun of the fair, with hardly a glance for the
feast of beauty which nature has spread around them with such a lavish
hand.

Along the level ground above the beach the tents and caravans are drawn
up in orderly array. Stretching away from the shore is the bay, lying
calm and unruffled under the summer sky, except when its glassy surface
is rippled by the dip of an oar or churned into froth by the restless
pulsations of a passing steamer. Across the bay the hills rise
beautiful and purple-blue through the evening glow, throwing out
encircling arms around the villages dotted thick and white along their
base, as the arms of a mother are open wide to infold her nestling
children.

Away to the left the bay stretches on till its waters are merged in
ocean; while to the east, above the little town, with its swarming
streets, its bustling railway station, its quiet cemetery, its chimneys,
and its spires, rises another range of hills, seeming in their nearness
like a God-built barrier between that old-world village on the Scottish
coast and the steadily advancing steps of the great city which lies
beyond.

CHAPTER XVII.

ADIEU!

"We need love's tender lessons taught
As only weakness can;
God hath His small interpreters--
The child must teach the man.

"Of such the king