bonnet, hat, he has
none; and his yellow hair, dancing on his shoulders like a mane, gives
him the look of a precocious lion's whelp. Leonine too in his aspect,
yet mild withal; and but for a certain fierceness in his gambols, you
would not suspect he was a young creature of prey. A fowling-piece is in
his left hand, and in his right a rod. And what may he be purposing to
shoot? Anything full-fledged that may play whirr or sugh. Good
grouse-ground this; but many are yet in the egg, and the rest are but
cheepers--little bigger than the small brown moorland bird that goes
birling up with its own short epithalamium, and drops down on the rushes
still as a stone. Them he harms not on their short flight--but marking
them down, twirls his piece like a fugleman, and thinks of the Twelfth.
Safer methinks wilt thou be a score or two yards further off, O Whaup!
for though thy young are yet callow, Kit is beginning to think they may
shift for themselves; and that long bill and that long neck, and those
long legs and that long body--the _tout-ensemble_ so elegant, so
graceful, and so wild--are a strong temptation to the trigger;--click--
clack--whizz--phew--fire--smoke and thunder--head-over-heels topsy-turvy
goes the poor curlew--and Kit stands over him leaning on his
single-barrel, with a stern but somewhat sad aspect, exulting in his
skill, yet sorry for the creature whose wild cry will be heard no more.

'Tis an oasis in the desert. That green spot is called a quagmire--an
ugly name enough--but itself is beautiful; for it diffuses its own light
round about it, like a star vivifying its halo. The sward encircling it
is firm--and Kit lays him down, heedless of the bird, with eyes fixed on
the oozing spring. How fresh the wild cresses! His very eyes are
drinking! His thirst is at once excited and satisfied by looking at the
lustrous leaves--composed of cooling light without spot or stain. What
ails the boy? He covers his face with his hands, and in the silence
sighs. A small white hand, with its fingers spread, rises out of the
spring, as if it were beckoning to heaven in prayer--and then is sucked
slowly in again out of sight with a gurgling groan. The spring so fresh
and fair--so beautiful with its cresses and many another water-loving
plant beside--is changed into the same horrid quagmire it was that
day--a holiday--three years ago--when racing in her joy Amy Lewars
blindly ran into it, among her blithe companions, and suddenly