whole cover in a few seasons; and not a bird can open his wing, not a
rat switch his tail, without scattering the straw like chaff. Eternal
repairs! Look when you will, and half-a-dozen thatchers are riding on
the rigging; of all operatives the most inoperative. Then there is
always one of the number descending the ladder for a horn of ale.
Without warning, the straw is all used up; and no more fit for the
purpose can be got within twenty miles. They hint heather--and you sigh
for slate--the beautiful sky-blue, sea-green, Ballachulish slate! But
the summer is nearly over and gone, and you must be flitting back to the
city; so you let the job stand over to spring, and the soaking rains and
snows of a long winter search the Cottage to its heart's-core, and every
floor is ere long laden with a crop of fungi--the bed-posts are
ornamented curiously with lichens, and mosses bathe the walls with their
various and inimitable lustre.

Everything is romantic that is pastoral--and what more pastoral than
sheep? Accordingly, living in a Cottage, you kill your own mutton. Great
lubberly Leicesters or Southdowns are not worth the mastication, so you
keep the small black-face. Stone walls are ugly things, you think, near
a Cottage, so you have rails or hurdles. Day and night are the small
black-face, out of pure spite, bouncing through or over all impediments,
after an adventurous leader, and, despising the daisied turf, keep
nibbling away at all your rare flowering shrubs, till your avenue is a
desolation. Every twig has its little ball of wool, and it is a rare
time for the nest-makers. You purchase a collie, but he compromises the
affair with the fleecy nation, and contents himself with barking all
night long at the moon, if there happen to be one--if not, at the
firmament of his kennel. You are too humane to hang or drown Luath, so
you give him to a friend. But Luath is in love with the cook, and pays
her nightly visits. Afraid of being entrapped should he step into the
kennel, he takes up his station, after supper, on a knoll within
ear-range, and pointing his snout to the stars, joins the music of the
spheres, and is himself a perfect Sirius. The gardener at last gets
orders to shoot him--and the gun being somewhat rusty, bursts and blows
off his left hand--so that Andrew Fairservice retires on a pension.

Of all breeds of cattle we most admire the Alderney. They are slim,
delicate, wild-deer-looking creatures, that give an air