bath we felt as if our
footsteps were on the boundaries of another world--that kind, loving
angels were near watching all our doings.

I am drawing a true picture of Sunday life in many a Scottish family, but
I would not have my readers mistake me. Let me say, then, that ours was
not a religion of fear so much as of love. To grieve or vex the great Good
Being who made us and gave us so much to be thankful for would have been a
crime which would have brought its own punishment by the sorrow and
repentance created in our hearts.

Just one other thing I must mention, because it has a bearing on events to
be related in the next chapter. We were taught then never to forget that a
day of reckoning was before us all, that after death should come the
judgment. But mother's prayers and our religion brought us only the most
unalloyed happiness.

CHAPTER III.

A TERRIBLE RIDE.

I have but to gaze from the window of the tower in which I am writing to
see a whole fieldful of the daftest-looking long-tailed, long-maned ponies
imaginable. These are the celebrated Castle Coila ponies, as full of
mischief, fun, and fire as any British boy could wish, most difficult to
catch, more difficult still to saddle, and requiring all the skill of a
trained equestrian to manage after mounting. As these ponies are to-day,
so they were when I was a boy. The very boys whom I mentioned in the last
chapter would have gone anywhere and done anything rather than attempt to
ride a Coila pony. Not that they ever refused, they were too courageous
for that. But when Gilmore led a pony round, I know it needed all the
pluck they could muster to put foot in stirrup. Flora's advice to them was
not bad.

'There is plenty of room on the moors, boys,' she would say, laughing; and
Flora always brought out the word 'boys' with an air of patronage and
self-superiority that was quite refreshing. 'Plenty of room on the moors,
so you keep the ponies hard at the gallop, till they are quite tired.
Mind, don't let them trot. If you do, they will lie down and tumble.'

Poor Archie Bateman! I shall never forget his first wild scamper over the
moorland. He would persist in riding in his best London clothes, spotless
broad white collar, shining silk hat, gloves, and all. Before mounting he
even bent down to flick a little tiny bit of dust off his boots.

The ponies were fresh that morning. In fact, the word 'fresh' hardly
describes the feeling of buoyancy they