prisonment of the morning, Gibbie sped
joyously along. Already nature, her largeness, her openness, her
loveliness, her changefulness, her oneness in change, had begun to
heal the child's heart, and comfort him in his disappointment with
his kind. The stream he was now ascending ran along a claw of the
mountain, which claw was covered with almost a forest of pine,
protecting little colonies of less hardy timber. Its heavy green
was varied with the pale delicate fringes of the fresh foliage of
the larches, filling the air with aromatic breath. In the midst of
their soft tufts, each tuft buttoned with a brown spot, hung the
rich brown knobs and tassels of last year's cones. But the trees
were all on the opposite side of the stream, and appeared to be
mostly on the other side of a wall. Where Gibbie was, the
mountain-root was chiefly of rock, interspersed with heather.

A little way up the stream, he came to a bridge over it, closed at
the farther end by iron gates between pillars, each surmounted by a
wolf's head in stone. Over the gate on each side leaned a
rowan-tree, with trunk and branches aged and gnarled amidst their
fresh foliage. He crossed the burn to look through the gate, and
pressed his face between the bars to get a better sight of a tame
rabbit that had got out of its hutch. It sat, like a Druid white
with age, in the midst of a gravel drive, much overgrown with moss,
that led through a young larch wood, with here and there an ancient
tree, lonely amidst the youth of its companions. Suddenly from the
wood a large spaniel came bounding upon the rabbit. Gibbie gave a
shriek, and the rabbit made one white flash into the wood, with the
dog after him. He turned away sad at heart.

"Ilka cratur 'at can," he said to himself, "ates ilka cratur 'at
canna!"

It was his first generalization, but not many years passed before he
supplemented it with a conclusion:

"But the man 'at wad be a man, he maunna."

Resuming his journey of investigation, he trotted along the bank of
the burn, farther and farther up, until he could trot no more, but
must go clambering over great stones, or sinking to the knees in
bog, patches of it red with iron, from which he would turn away with
a shudder. Sometimes he walked in the water, along the bed of the
burn itself; sometimes he had to scramble up its steep side, to pass
one of the many little cataracts of its descent. Here and there a
small silver birch, or a mountai