146 ANGLING REMINISCENCES. 



the hinds calve. 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 scat- 

 tered 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 with- 

 in 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 har- 

 monies, 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. 



May. This is a sudden resolution, Doctor a 

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



