, and afterwards by reason. To look at a
wild creature--winged with feathers, or mere feet--and not desire to
destroy or capture it--is impossible to passion--to imagination--to
fancy. Thus had we longed to feel and handle the glossy plumage of the
beaked birds--the wide-winged Birds of Prey--before our finger had ever
touched a trigger. Their various flight, in various weather, we had
watched and noted with something even of the eye of a naturalist--the
wonder of a poet; for among the brood of boys there are hundreds and
thousands of poets who never see manhood--the poetry dying away--the boy
growing up into mere prose;--yet to some even of the paragraphs of these
Three Fyttes do we appeal, that a few sparks of the sacred light are yet
alive within us; and sad to our old ears would be the sound of "Put out
the light, and then--put out the light!" Thus were we impelled, even
when a mere child, far away from the manse, for miles, into the moors
and woods. Once it was feared that poor wee Kit was lost; for having set
off all by himself, at sunrise, to draw a night-line from the distant
Black Loch, and look at a trap set for a glead, a mist overtook him on
the moor on his homeward way, with an eel as long as himself hanging
over his shoulder, and held him prisoner for many hours within its
shifting walls, frail indeed, and opposing no resistance to the hand,
yet impenetrable to the feet of fear as the stone dungeon's thraldom. If
the mist had remained, that would have been nothing; only a still cold
wet seat on a stone; but as "a trot becomes a gallop soon, in spite of
curb and rein," so a Scotch mist becomes a shower--and a shower a
flood--and a flood a storm--and a storm a tempest--and a tempest thunder
and lightning--and thunder and lightning heavenquake and
earthquake--till the heart of poor wee Kit quaked, and almost died
within him in the desert. In this age of Confessions, need we be
ashamed to own, in the face of the whole world, that we sat us down and
cried! The small brown Moorland bird, as dry as a toast, hopped out of
his heather-hole, and cheerfully cheeped comfort. With crest just a
thought lowered by the rain, the green-backed, white-breasted peaseweep,
walked close by us in the mist; and sight of wonder, that made even in
that quandary by the quagmire our heart beat with joy--lo! never seen
before, and seldom since, three wee peaseweeps, not three days old,
little bigger than shrew-mice, all covered with bla