THE DAILY LIFE OF OUR FARM. 269 



waters. The dense, dirty volume had been visibly 

 swelling for hours, and was just beginning to over- 

 spread the meadow along its immediate margin, besides 

 making insidious inroads by every hollow spot and 

 ditch. I had some colts out, which I did not want 

 drowned ; so merely changing one's dress-boots (we had 

 just returned from the warm shelter of a festive 

 drawing-room — a very different climate to that to 

 which the colts were submitted), and throwing on an 

 Inverness cape, I hurried down to see how far it might 

 be safe to trust the night, as our head servant, who is a 

 stranger to these parts, and not yet used to the river's 

 vagaries, had not thought fit to have them moved, and 

 it struck me as hard lines to disturb at such an hour a 

 zealous man. Well, I hurried down, and was enrap- 

 tured. The long grass on the orchard slopes, kept as 

 rowen for the ewes and lambs in spring, rustled quite 

 crisp under my tread, for the air was frosty, and when, 

 the moon shone — a brilliant all-but-full moon — each 

 blade glistened with a coronet of diamonds. Then the 

 river, when I reached it, lay in a lovely lagoon, so calm, 

 so lustrous, so lovelily reflecting at once each twinkling 

 star — the dark hanging woods, and sharp-cut cliff. So 

 calm is the pool that I doubt its advance upon the 

 meadow, and have to watch by the light of the moon, 

 where it is nevertheless most determinedly though 

 slily stealing on through rootlet and mould-heap. You 

 can tell the fact only by watching the gradual disap- 

 pearance of some glistening leaf as it is swallowed up, 

 or the movement of some floating twig ; and our boat 

 there — she who played us, as I have recorded, so nearly 

 false — floats gaily and indifferently buoyant, on the 

 surface of a flood, which, though so treacherously still 



