THE OLD RED SANDSTONE. a 
being attended with some such degree of danger as a boating 
or rock excursion, and had thus an interest independent of its 
novelty. We had a few capital shots: the fragments flew 
in every direction; and an immense mass of the diluvium 
came toppling down, bearing with it two dead birds, that ina 
recent storm had crept into one of the deeper fissures, to die 
in the shelter. I felt a new interest in examining them. The 
one was a pretty cock goldfinch, with its hood of vermilion, 
and its wings inlaid with the gold to which it owes its name, 
as unsoiled and smooth as if it had been preserved for a mu- 
seum. ‘The other, a somewhat rarer bird, of the woodpecker 
tribe, was variegated with light blue and a grayish yellow. I 
was engaged in admiring the poor little things, more disposed 
to be sentimental, perhaps, than if I had been ten years older, 
and thinking of the contrast between the warmth and jollity 
of their green summer haunts, and the cold and darkness of 
their last retreat, when I heard our employer bidding the 
workmen lay by their tools. I looked up, and saw the sun 
sinking behind the thick fir wood beside us, and the long, 
dark shadows of the trees stretching downwards towards the 
shore. 
This was no very formidable beginning of the course of 
life | had so much dreaded. To be sure, my hands were a 
little sore, and I felt nearly as much fatigued as if I had been 
climbing among the rocks ; but I had wrought and been use- 
ful, and had yet enjoyed the day fully as much as usual. It 
was no small matter, too, that the evening, converted, by a 
rare transmutation, into the delicious * blink of rest?’ which 
Burns so truthfully describes, was all my own. I was as 
light of heart next morning as any of my brother-workmen. 
There had been a smart frost during the night, and the rime 
lay white on the grass as we passed onwards through the 
1 ¥* 
