154 ANGLING REMINISCENCES. 



What see we around but huge hills, bare and bleak 

 or skirted, like this one, with promiscuous wood 

 and below us, to our left, only a single stripe of 

 plough-turned soil, with a few scattered hovels, each 

 of which is tenanted to the full by the children's 

 children of such as were centuries past the inhabiters 

 of the self-same spot ? These are no intruders on 

 solitude, for they hum ever close to their own hives, 

 and adventure not in quest of sights and sounds, remote 

 but a step from the roofs under which they harbour. 

 Despite of them build within call the boding raven 

 and the sun-buzzard, while the red-deer of Achilty 

 brandishes his careless antlers from rock and forest. 

 Listen thou, and spell out the elements of nature's 

 anthem the dulcet clusters of glad voices, that fill 

 the surrounding air. Bees, birds, and waters, mingle 

 together their several harmonies, and now, among these 

 thousand twinkling leaves above us, singeth plaintively 

 the summer wind. Its tones unman me most, for they 

 are soft and touching as of female sorrow yet this 

 gust is bolder, Bill, and creates a crave in me to test 

 again the water. I must up and away to the loch of 

 Herons above Tarvie wood, where I may chance, 

 should the breeze improve, to ring the snouts of a 

 score as spirited fish as ever cleft flood and that 

 in spite of all threat or restriction on the part of the 

 proprietor. 



Mai/. This is a sudden resolution, Doctor a 

 wayward caprice. I am in no mood to second thee, 



