perished.
Childhood, they say, soon dries its tears, and soon forgets. God be
praised for all his goodness! true it is that on the cheek of childhood
tears are dried up as if by the sunshine of joy stealing from on
high--but, God be praised for all his goodness! false it is that the
heart of childhood has not a long memory, for in a moment the mournful
past revives within it--as often as the joyful--sadness becomes sorrow,
sorrow grief, and grief anguish, as now it is with the solitary boy
seated by that ghastly spot in the middle of the wide moor.

Away he flies, and he is humming a tune. But what's this? A merry-making
in the moor? Ay, merry-making; but were you to take part in it, you
would find it about the hardest work that ever tried the strength of
your spine. 'Tis a party of divot-flaughters. The people in the parish
are now digging their peats, and here is a whole household, provident of
winter, borrowing fuel from the moss. They are far from coals, and wood
is intended by nature for other uses; but fire in peat she dedicated to
the hearth, and there it burns all over Scotland, Highland and Lowland,
far and near, at many a holy altar. 'Tis the mid-day hour of rest. Some
are half asleep, some yet eating, some making a sort of under-voiced,
under-hand love. "Mr North! Mr North! Mr North!" is the joyful
cry--horny-fists first--downy-fists next--and after heartiest greeting,
Master Kitty is installed, enthroned on a knowe, Master of the
Ceremonies--and in good time gives them a song. Then "galliards cry a
hall, a hall," and hark and lo! preluded by six smacks--three foursome
reels! "Sic hirdum-dirdum and sic din," on the sward, to a strathspey
frae the fiddle o' auld blin' Hugh Lyndsay, the itinerant musicianer,
who was noways particular about the number of his strings, and when one,
or even two snapped, used to play away at pretty much of the same tune
with redoubled energy and variations. He had the true old Niel-Gow yell,
and had he played on for ever, folk would have danced on for ever till
they had all, one after the other, dropped down dead. What steps!

"Who will try me," cries Kit, "at loup-the-barrows?" "I will," quoth
Souple Tam. The barrows are laid--how many side by side we fear to
say--for we have become sensitive on our veracity--on a beautiful piece
of springy turf, an inclined plane with length sufficient for a run; and
while old and young line both sides of the lane near the loup, stript to
the sa