ressed him;
at times he would fancy it was his scholars who were clamouring before
him, and he checked on his lips a high peremptory challenge for silence,
flushing to think how nearly he had made himself ridiculous. From his
stool he could see over the frosted glass of the lower window sash into
the playground where it lay bathed in a yellow light, and bare-legged
children played at shinty, with loud shouts and violent rushes after a
little wooden ball. The town's cows were wandering in for the night
from the common muir, with their milkmaids behind them in vast wide
petticoats of two breadths, and their blue or lilac short-gowns tucked
well up at their arms. Behind, the windows revealed the avenue, the road
overhung with the fresh leaves of the beeches, the sunlight filtering
through in lighter splashes on the shade. Within, the drink was running
to its dregs, and piles of oatcake farls lay yet untouched. One by
one the company departed. The glen folks solemnly shook hands with
the Paymaster, as donor of the feast, and subdued their faces to a sad
regret for this "melancholy occasion, Captain Campbell"; then went over
to the taverns in the tenements and kept up their drinking and their
singing till late in the evening; the merchants and writers had gone
earlier, and now but the officers and Brooks were left, and Mr. Spencer,
superintending the removal of his vessels and fragments to the inn. The
afternoon was sinking into the calm it ever has in this place, drowsing,
mellowing; an air of trance lay all about, and even the pensioners,
gathered at the head of the schoolroom near the door, seemed silent as
his scholars to the ear of Brooks. He lifted the flap of his desk and
kept it up with his head while he surveyed the interior. Grammars and
copy-books, pens in long tin boxes, the terrible black tawse he never
used but reluctantly, and the confiscated playthings of the children who
had been guilty of encroaching upon the hours of study with the trifles
of leisure, were heaped within. They were for the most part the common
toys of the country-side, and among them was a whistle made of young
ash, after the fashion practised by children, who tap upon the bark to
release it from its wood, slip off the bark entire upon its sap, and cut
the vent or blow-hole. Old Brooks took it in his hand and a smile went
over his visage.

"General Turner," he cried up the room, "here's an oddity I would like
to show you," and he balanced t