nature
became more our own, moulded and modified by all our own feelings and
fancies; and with a bolder and more original eye we saw the smoke from
the sprinkled cottages, and read the faces of the mountaineers on their
way to their work, or coming and going to the house of God.

Then this was to be our last year in the parish--now dear to us as our
birthplace; nay, itself our very birthplace--for in it from the darkness
of infancy had our soul been born. Once gone and away from the region of
cloud and mountain, we felt that most probably never more should we
return. For others, who thought they knew us better than we did
ourselves, had chalked out a future life for young Christopher North--a
life that was sure to lead to honour, and riches, and a splendid name.
Therefore we determined with a strong, resolute, insatiate spirit of
passion, to make the most--the best--of the few months that remained to
us, of that our wild, free, and romantic existence, as yet untrammelled
by those inexorable laws, which, once launched into the world, all
alike--young and old--must obey. Our books were flung aside--nor did
our old master and minister frown--for he grudged not to the boy he
loved the remnant of the dream about to be rolled away like the dawn's
rosy clouds. We demanded with our eye--not with our voice--one long
holiday, throughout that our last autumn, on to the pale farewell
blossoms of the Christmas rose. With our rod we went earlier to the loch
or river; but we had not known thoroughly our own soul--for now we
angled less passionately--less perseveringly than was our wont of
yore--sitting in a pensive, a melancholy, a miserable dream, by the
dashing waterfall or the murmuring wave. With our gun we plunged earlier
in the morning into the forest, and we returned later at eve--but less
earnest--less eager were we to hear the cushat's moan from his
yew-tree--to see the hawk's shadow on the glade, as he hung aloft on the
sky. A thousand dead thoughts came to life again in the gloom of the
woods--and we sometimes did wring our hands in an agony of grief, to
know that our eyes should not behold the birch-tree brightening there
with another spring.

Then every visit we paid to cottage or to shieling was felt to be a
farewell; there was something mournful in the smiles on the sweet faces
of the ruddy rustics, with their silken snoods, to whom we used to
whisper harmless love-meanings, in which there was no evil guile; we
regard