CHRISTOPHER IN HIS SPORTING JACKET 



to our old ears would be the sound of "Put out the 

 light, and then put out the light!" Thus were we 

 impelled, even when a mere child, far away from the 

 manse, for miles, into the moors and woods. Once it 

 was feared that poor wee Kit was lost; for having 

 set off all by himself, at sunrise, to draw a night-line 

 from the distant Black Loch, and look at a trap set 

 for a glead, a mist overtook him on the moor on his 

 homeward way, with an eel as long as himself hang- 

 ing over his shoulder, and held him prisoner for many 

 hours within its shifting walls, frail indeed, and op- 

 posing no resistance to the hand, yet impenetrable 

 to the feet of fear as the stone dungeon's thraldom. 

 If the mist had remained, that would have been 

 nothing; only a still cold wet seat on a stone; but as 

 "a trot becomes a gallop soon, in spite of curb and 

 rein," so a Scotch mist becomes a shower and a 

 shower a flood and a flood a storm and a storm a 

 tempest and a tempest thunder and lightning and 

 thunder and lightning heaven-quake and earth-quake 

 till the heart of poor wee Kit quaked, and almost 

 died within him in the desert. In this age of Confes- 

 sions, need we be ashamed to own, in the face of the 

 whole world, that we sat us' down and cried! The 

 small brown Moorland bird, as dry as a toast, hopped 

 out of his heather-hole, and cheerfully cheeped com- 

 fort. With crest just a thought lowered by the rain, 

 [101] 



