lie where once its shade fell in the hot summer days of its youth,--and
the blood would rise up on his neck, where the flesh had shrunk like
old cracked parchment, and left cords and pipes of arteries and veins,
gnarled like old ivy round a tree.

Querulous he was and ill-tempered with the scoffers. "Man, if I had
twenty more years I would grow hoofs on your horse and udders on your
in-coming queys." Well, well, I'm fond of this farming, but I have set
out to tell a tale, which in my poor fancy should even be like a
rotation of crops, from the breaking in of the lea to the sowing out in
grass, with the sun and winds and sweet rains to ripen and swell the
grain--the crying of the harvesters and the laughing of lassies among
the stocks in the gloaming, the neighing of horse and the lowing of
kine in the evening.

On that morning so long ago Dan and I were ploughing stubble, and I
followed my horses in all joy, laughing to see them snap as I turned
them in at the head-rigs, and coaxing them as they threw their big
glossy shoulders into the collar on the brae face. So the morning wore
on as I ploughed, with maybe a word now and then to Dick, and a touch
of the rein to Darling, and the sea-gulls screaming after us as the
good land was turned over. The sun came glinting through the hill
mist, and the green buds were bursting in the hedgerows for very
gladness.

I was free from the college, free from the smoke-wrack and the grime of
the town, free to hear the birds awake and singing in the planting
behind the stackyard, and I breathed great gulps of air and felt clean
and purged of all the evil of the town; for if there is vice in the
country, it is to my mind evil without sordidness.

I remember my foolish thoughts were something like these, even though
my reading should have taught me better, for the Garden of Eden was a
fine place to sin in by all accounts, yet the environment did not
mitigate the punishment. In these young days, when my body glowed from
a swim and my eyes were clear, I thought the minister too hard on that
original iniquity.

It was coming on for dinner-time--lowsin' time, as we say in the
field--when Dan shouted--

"Hamish," says he, "who'll yon be that's travellin' so fast above the
Craig-an-dubh?"

"I will be telling you that, Dan, when she's half a mile nearer."

"Ye hinna the toon mirk rubbed out your een yet, Hamish, or ye would
ken the bonny spaewife. I've been watchin' her this la