LETTER XXI. 



147 



frosty in the bright blinks between the driving north-east snow 

 squalls, throwing a sheet of white light over the distant sea and 

 the dried-up bed of the loch, which it has temporarily relinquished 



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— out there, breaking across that luminous pathway in a great black 

 streak, is a teeming mass of life, dabbling, squattering in the ooze, 

 sailing in black specks across the bright pools, surging to and fro. 

 Now a noisy contention rises among groups of the vast multitude, 



