t in pairs; the farm-boy seated on the clean
straw in the bottom of his cart, and cracking his whip in mere wanton
joy at the sunshine; the pretty cottages, and the gardens with rows of
currant and gooseberry bushes hanging thick with fruit that suggests
jam and tart in every delicious globule. It is a love-colored
landscape, we know it full well; and nothing in the fair world about
us is half as beautiful as what we see in each other's eyes. Ah, the
memories of these first golden mornings together after our long
separation. I shall sprinkle them with lavender and lay them away in
that dim chamber of the heart where we keep precious things. We all
know the chamber. It is fragrant with other hidden treasures, for all
of them are sweet, though some are sad. This is the reason why we put
a finger on the lip and say "Hush," if we open the door and allow any
one to peep in.

We tied the pony by the wayside and alighted: Willie to gather some
sprays of the pink veronica and blue speedwell, I to sit on an old
bench and watch him in happy idleness. The "white-blossomed slaes"
sweetened the air, and the distant hills were gay with golden whin and
broom, or flushed with the purply-red of the bell heather.

We heard the note of the cushats from a neighboring bush. They used to
build their nests on the ground, so the story goes, but the cows
trampled them. Now they are wiser and build higher, and their cry is
supposed to be a derisive one, directed to their ancient enemies,
"Come noo, Coo, Coo! Come noo!"

A hedgehog crept stealthily along the ground, and at a sudden sound
curled himself up like a wee brown bear. There were women working in
the fields near by,--a strange sight to our eyes at first, but nothing
unusual here, where many of them are employed on the farms all the
year round, sowing, weeding, planting, even ploughing in the spring,
and in winter working at threshing or in the granary.

An old man, leaning on his staff, came tottering feebly along, and
sank down on the bench beside me. He was dirty, ragged, unkempt, and
feeble, but quite sober, and pathetically anxious for human sympathy.

"I'm achty-sax year auld," he maundered, apropos of nothing,
"achty-sax year auld. I've seen five lairds o' Pettybaw, sax placed
meenisters, an' seeven doctors. I was a mason an' a stoot mon i' thae
days, but it's a meeserable life now. Wife deid, bairns deid! I sit by
my lane, an' smoke my pipe, wi' naebody to gi'e me a sup o' wa