se. At
meal-times they litter the hearth with each other's feathers; but for
the most part they give little trouble, roosting on the rafters of the
low-roofed kitchen among staves and fishing-rods.

Another white blanket has been spread upon the glen since I looked out
last night; for over the same wilderness of snow that has met my gaze
for a week, I see the steading of Waster Lunny sunk deeper into the
waste. The schoolhouse, I suppose, serves similarly as a snowmark for
the people at the farm. Unless that is Waster Lunny's grieve foddering
the cattle in the snow, not a living thing is visible. The ghostlike
hills that pen in the glen have ceased to echo to the sharp crack of
the sportsman's gun (so clear in the frosty air as to be a warning to
every rabbit and partridge in the valley); and only giant Catlaw shows
here and there a black ridge, rearing its head at the entrance to the
glen and struggling ineffectually to cast off his shroud. Most wintry
sign of all, I think as I close the window hastily, is the open
farm-stile, its poles lying embedded in the snow where they were last
flung by Waster Lunny's herd. Through the still air comes from a
distance a vibration as of a tuning-fork: a robin, perhaps, alighting
on the wire of a broken fence.

In the warm kitchen, where I dawdle over my breakfast, the widowed
bantam-hen has perched on the back of my drowsy cat. It is needless to
go through the form of opening the school to-day; for, with the
exception of Waster Lunny's girl, I have had no scholars for nine days.
Yesterday she announced that there would be no more schooling till it
was fresh, "as she wasna comin';" and indeed, though the smoke from the
farm chimneys is a pretty prospect for a snowed-up schoolmaster, the
trudge between the two houses must be weary work for a bairn. As for
the other children, who have to come from all parts of the hills and
glen, I may not see them for weeks. Last year the school was
practically deserted for a month. A pleasant outlook, with the March
examinations staring me in the face, and an inspector fresh from
Oxford. I wonder what he would say if he saw me to-day digging myself
out of the schoolhouse with the spade I now keep for the purpose in my
bedroom.

The kail grows brittle from the snow in my dank and cheerless garden.
A crust of bread gathers timid pheasants round me. The robins, I see,
have made the coalhouse their home. Waster Lunny's dog never barks
w