rs,
whose elastic, well-tightened lines snapped sharp before me as I pressed
through, and then curled up on the scarce perceptible breeze, like
broken strands of wool. But every man, however Whiggish in his
inclinations, entertains a secret respect for the powerful; and though I
passed within a few feet of a large wasps' nest, suspended to a jutting
bough of furze, the wasps I took especial care _not_ to disturb. I
pressed on, first through a broad belt of the forest, occupied mainly by
melancholy Scotch firs; next through an opening, in which I found an
American-looking village of mingled cottages, gardens, fields and wood;
and then through another broad forest-belt, in which the ground is more
varied with height and hollow than in the first, and in which I found
only forest trees, mostly oaks and beeches. I heard the roar of the
Findhorn before me, and premised I was soon to reach the river; but
whether I should pursue it upwards or downwards, in order to find the
ferry at Sluie, was more than I knew. There lay in my track a beautiful
hillock, that reclines on the one side to the setting sun, and sinks
sheer on the other, in a mural sandstone precipice, into the Findhorn.
The trees open over it, giving full access to the free air and the
sunshine; and I found it as thickly studded over with berries as if it
had been the special care of half a dozen gardeners. The red light fell
yet redder on the thickly inlaid cranberries and stone-brambles of the
slope, and here and there, though so late in the season, on a patch of
wild strawberries; while over all, dark, delicate blueberries, with
their flour-bedusted coats, were studded as profusely as if they had
been peppered over it by a hailstone cloud. I have seldom seen such a
school-boy's paradise, and I was just thinking what a rare discovery I
would have deemed it had I made it thirty years sooner, when I heard a
whooping in the wood, and four little girls, the eldest scarcely eleven,
came bounding up to the hillock, their lips and fingers already dyed
purple, and dropped themselves down among the berries with a shout. They
were sadly startled to find they had got a companion in so solitary a
recess; but I succeeded in convincing them that they were in no manner
of danger from him; and on asking whether there was any of them skilful
enough to show me the way to Sluie, they told me they all lived there,
and were on their way home from school, which they attended at the
vill