uch my honour for its truth; and if any one seek
further proof, let him go east the town and west the town and over the
fields of No mans land to the Long Muir, and if he find not the King
there among the peat-ricks, and get not a courteous answer to his
question, then times have changed in that part of the country, and he
must continue the quest to his Majesty's castle in Spain.

Once upon a time, says the tale, there was a Great Godly Man, a
shepherd to trade, who lived in a cottage among heather. If you looked
east in the morning, you saw miles of moor running wide to the flames
of sunrise, and if you turned your eyes west in the evening, you saw a
great confusion of dim peaks with the dying eye of the sun set in a
crevice. If you looked north, too, in the afternoon, when the life of
the day is near its end and the world grows wise, you might have seen a
country of low hills and haughlands with many waters running sweet
among meadows. But if you looked south in the dusty forenoon or at hot
midday, you saw the far-off glimmer of a white road, the roofs of the
ugly little clachan of Kilmaclavers, and the rigging of the fine new
kirk of Threepdaidle. It was a Sabbath afternoon in the hot weather,
and the man had been to kirk all the morning. He had heard a grand
sermon from the minister (or it may have been the priest, for I am not
sure of the date and the King told the story quickly)--a fine discourse
with fifteen heads and three parentheses. He held all the parentheses
and fourteen of the heads in his memory, but he had forgotten the
fifteenth; so for the purpose of recollecting it, and also for the sake
of a walk, he went forth in the afternoon into the open heather.

The whaups were crying everywhere, making the air hum like the twanging
of a bow. Poo-eelie, Poo-eelie, they cried, Kirlew, Kirlew, Whaup,
Wha-up. Sometimes they came low, all but brushing him, till they drove
settled thoughts from his head. Often had he been on the moors, but
never had he seen such a stramash among the feathered clan. The
wailing iteration vexed him, and he shoo'd the birds away with his
arms. But they seemed to mock him and whistle in his very face, and at
the flaff of their wings his heart grew sore. He waved his great
stick; he picked up bits of loose moor-rock and flung them wildly; but
the godless crew paid never a grain of heed. The morning's sermon was
still in his head, and the grave words of the minister still rat