t and quiet beauty of the valley sleeping under their watch and
ward. As the sun-bursts from the strath-skies above darted out of
their shifting cloud-walls and flashed a flush of light upon the
solemn brows of these majestic apostles of nature one by one, they
stood haloed, like the favored saints in Scripture in the overflow
of the Transfiguration. It was just the kind of day to make the
scene glorious indescribably. The clouds and sky were in the
happiest disposition for the brilliant plays and pictures of light
and shade, and dissolving views of fascinating splendor succeeded
and surpassed each other at a minute's interval. Now, the great
land-lake, on whose bosom floated in the sunlight a thousand islands
oat-and-barley-gilded, and rimmed with the green and purple verdure
of the turnip and rutabaga, was all set a-glow by a luminous flood
from the opening clouds above. The next moment they closed this
disparted seam in their drapery, and opened a side one upon the
still, grave faces of the surrounding mountains; and, for a few
minutes, the smile went round from one to the other, and the great
centurions of the hills looked happy and almost human in the gleam.
Then shade's turn came in the play, and it played its part as
perfectly as light. It put in the touch of the old Italian masters,
giving an everchanging background to all the sublime pictures of the
panorama.

I was not alone in the enjoyment of this scenery. For the first
time in this Walk I had a companion for a day. A clergyman from
near Edinburgh joined me at Kingussie, with whom I shared the luxury
of one of the most splendid views to be found in Scotland. Indeed,
few minds are so constituted as to prefer to see such natural
pictures alone. After a day's walk among these sceneries, we came
to the small village of Aviemore in the dusk of the evening. Here
we found that the only inn had been closed and turned into a private
residence, and that it was doubtful if a bed could be had for love
or money in the place. The railway through it to Inverness had just
been opened, and the navvies seemed still to constitute the largest
portion of the population. Neither of us had eaten any dinner, and
we were hungry as well as tired. Seeing a little, low cottage near
the railroad, with the sign of something for the public good over
the door, we went to it, and found that it had two rooms, one a kind
of rough, stone-floored shed, the other an apartment full