ckish down,
interspersed with long white hair, running after their mother! But the
large hazel eye of the she peaseweep, restless even in the most utter
solitude, soon spied us glowering at her, and her young ones, through
our tears; and not for a moment doubting--Heaven forgive her for the
shrewd but cruel suspicion!--that we were Lord Eglinton's
gamekeeper--with a sudden shrill cry that thrilled to the marrow in our
cold backbone--flapped and fluttered herself away into the mist, while
the little black bits of down disappeared, like devils, into the moss.
The croaking of the frogs grew terrible. And worse and worse, close at
hand, seeking his lost cows through the mist, the bellow of the
notorious red bull! We began saying our prayers; and just then the sun
forced himself out into the open day, and, like the sudden opening of
the shutters of a room, the whole world was filled with light. The frogs
seemed to sink among the powheads--as for the red bull who had tossed
the tinker, he was cantering away, with his tail towards us, to a lot of
cows on the hill; and hark--a long, a loud, an oft-repeated halloo! Rab
Roger, honest fellow, and Leezy Muir, honest lass, from the manse, in
search of our dead body! Rab pulls our ears lightly, and Leezy kisses us
from the one to the other--wrings the rain out of our long yellow
hair--(a pretty contrast to the small grey sprig now on the crown of our
pericranium, and the thin tail acock behind)--and by-and-by stepping
into Hazel-Deanhead for a drap and a "chitterin' piece," by the time we
reach the manse we are as dry as a whistle--take our scold and our
pawmies from the minister--and, by way of punishment and penance, after
a little hot whisky-toddy, with brown sugar and a bit of bun, are
bundled off to bed in the daytime!

Thus we grew up a Fowler, ere a loaded gun was in our hand--and often
guided the city-fowler to the haunts of the curlew, the plover, the
moorfowl, and the falcon. The falcon! yes--in the higher region of
clouds and cliffs. For now we had shot up into a stripling--and how fast
had we so shot up you may know, by taking notice of the schoolboy on the
play-green, and two years afterwards, discovering, perhaps, that he is
that fine tall ensign carrying the colours among the light-bobs of the
regiment, to the sound of clarion and flute, cymbal and great drum,
marching into the city a thousand strong.

We used in early boyhood, deceived by some uncertainty in size, no