110 HAPPY HUNTING-GROUNDS 



I have a bad head for precipices, never objected to 

 crossing 



" that steep strait of rock whose twin-cliffed height 

 Links crag with crag reiterate, land with land, 

 By one sheer thread of narrowing precipice 

 Bifront, that binds and sunders 

 Abyss from hollower imminent abyss, 

 And wilder isle with island, blind for bliss 

 Of sea that lightens and of wind that thunders." 



It was, however, too much for my friend Frank 

 Lockwood, who got a headache after crossing it, and 

 spoke of it afterwards as a " dreadful place." 



Dear Frank Lockwood ! It was with that bright- 

 est and cheeriest of companions and truest of friends 

 that I visited Sark in 1896 ; and, although the Coupe'e 

 was too much for him, he thoroughly appreciated 

 the island, with its beauty, its quiet, and its grand 

 scenery. It was the last of those happy Easter 

 holidays when, with his family and friends, he threw 

 off the weight of Parliamentary and legal cares and 

 became a boy once more. Like him, I had my wife 

 and children with me, and I shall never forget that 

 happy gathering, and how devoted all the young 

 people were to the cheery and sympathetic friend 

 who joined so heartily in all their amusements never 

 patronised or lectured them, but talked to them 

 without pedantry or aifectation on a footing of 

 equality. How we all enjoyed the walk we had 

 together when my daughter's little Scotch terrier 

 incontinently fell upon a duck, and nearly slaughtered 

 it in full sight of a cottage, at the door of which the 

 outraged proprietress appeared. How he laughed 

 at the old women holding up their hands at the door, 



