of God stretched down through the mist and snow from heaven. We
all said that it would never leave our memory; yet all of us soon forgot
it--but now, while the tempest howls, it seems again of yesterday.

One family lived in Glencreran, and another in Glenco--the families of
two brothers--seldom visiting each other on working-days--seldom meeting
even on Sabbaths, for theirs was not the same parish-kirk--seldom coming
together on rural festivals or holidays, for in the Highlands now these
are not so frequent as of yore; yet all these sweet seldoms, taken
together, to loving hearts made a happy many, and thus, though each
family passed its life in its own home, there were many invisible
threads stretched out through the intermediate air, connecting the two
dwellings together--as the gossamer keeps floating from one tree to
another, each with its own secret nest. And nest-like both dwellings
were. _That_ in Glenco, built beneath a treeless but high-heathered
rock--lown in all storms--with greensward and garden on a slope down to
a rivulet, the clearest of the clear (oh! once woefully reddened!) and
_growing_--so it seems in the mosses of its own roof, and the huge
stones that overshadow it--out of the earth. _That_ in Glencreran, more
conspicuous, on a knoll among the pastoral meadows, midway between
mountain and mountain, so that the grove which shelters it, except when
the sun is shining high, is darkened by their meeting shadows, and dark
indeed even in the sunshine, for 'tis a low but wide-armed grove of old
oak-like pines. A little further down, and Glencreran is very sylvan;
but this dwelling is the highest up of all, the first you descend upon,
near the foot of that wild hanging staircase between you and Glen-Etive;
and, except this old oak-like grove of pines, there is not a tree, and
hardly a bush, on bank or brae, pasture or hay-field, though these are
kept by many a rill there mingling themselves into one stream, in a
perpetual lustre, that seems to be as native to the grass as its light
is to the glow-worm. Such are the two Huts--for they are huts and no
more--and you may see them still, if you know how to discover the
beautiful sights of nature from descriptions treasured in your
heart--and if the spirit of change, now nowhere at rest on the earth,
not even in its most solitary places, have not swept from the scenes
they beautified the humble but hereditary dwellings that ought to be
allowed, in the fulness o