I A Gossip on a Sid lier Land Hill-side 241 



knows what may happen till the mystic hour of 

 twelve, when it is the established creed of the hill 

 that the great crisis of the weather takes place. 

 Scrambling upwards along the bed of the burn, 

 startling the grouse cock from so near our feet that 

 he almost chokes himself with his own crow as he 

 vanishes in the mist, we reach the bothy where one 

 of shepherd Rory's deputies lives, for week after 

 week, in a solitude as complete as ever hermit enjoyed. 

 Indeed, what with the solitude and his enforced 

 temperance, living, as he does, on oatmeal and water 

 with an occasional trout, Donald Dhu would be on 

 a par with any anchorite of them all, did he not 

 destroy the virtue of the thing by being a useful 

 man instead of an idle one, counting his sheep instead 

 of his beads. A wild life they live on the hill, these 

 shepherds ; but, being for the most part men of reflec- 

 tion and observation, it is by no means without its 

 pleasures. Wondrous combinations of cloud and 

 sunshine, that would be denounced as ravings by 

 a southern connoisseur if faithfully reproduced on 

 canvas, reward his early rising. Not once or twice 

 a year only is he on the higher peaks before sunrise, 

 but day by day for weeks together he sees the 

 marvels of the northern sun sweeping round the 

 horizon, and till evening closes in he is face to face 

 with Nature, studying every shift of wind and swirl 

 of vapour, and gaining a practical knowledge of 

 meteorology which would astonish an astronomer 

 from a royal observatory. 



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