CHRISTOPHER IN HIS SPORTING JACKET 



the heron floating before us, return to the heather- 

 fringed shore, and give three cheers that startle the 

 echoes, asleep from year's end to year's end, in the 

 Grey-Linn Cairn. 



Into the silent twilight of many a wild rock-and- 

 river scene, beautiful and bewildering as the fairy 

 work of sleep, will he find himself brought who knows 

 where to seek the heron in all his solitary haunts. 

 For often when the moors are storm-swept, and his 

 bill would be baffled by the waves of tarn and loch, 

 he sails away from his swinging-tree, and through 

 some open glade dipping down to the secluded stream, 

 alights within the calm chasm, and folds his wings in 

 the breezeless air. The clouds are driving fast aloft 

 in a carry from the sea — but they are all reflected 

 in that pellucid pool — so perfect the cliff-guarded re- 

 pose. A better day — a better hour — a better minute 

 for fishing could not have been chosen by Mr Heron, 

 who is already swallowing a par. Another — and an- 

 other — but something falls from the rock into the 

 water; and suspicious, though unalarmed, he leisurely 

 addresses himself to a short flight up the channel — 

 round that tower-like cliff" standing strangely by it- 

 self, with a crest of self-sown flowering shrubs; and 

 lo! another vista, if possible, just a degree more silent 

 — more secluded — more solitary — beneath the mid- 

 day night of woods! To shoot thee there — would be 

 [66] 



