CHRISTOPHER IN HIS SPORTING JACKET 



we saw the smoke from the sprinkled cottages, and 

 read the faces of the mountaineers on their w^ay to 

 their work, or coming and going to the house of God. 

 Then this was to be our last year in the parish — 

 now dear to us as our birth-place; nay, itself our very 

 birth-place — for in it from the darkness of infancy 

 had our soul been born. Once gone and away from 

 the region of cloud and mountain, we felt that most 

 probably never more should we return. For others, 

 who thought they knew us better than we did our- 

 selves, had chalked out a future life for young Chris- 

 topher North — a life that was sure to lead to honour, 

 and riches, and a splendid name. Therefore we deter- 

 mined with a strong, resolute, insatiate spirit of pas- 

 sion, to make the most — the best — of the few months 

 that remained to us, of that our wild, free, and roman- 

 tic existence, as yet untrammelled by those inexorable 

 laws, which, once launched into the world, all alike — 

 young and old — must obey. Our books w^ere flung 

 aside — nor did our old master and minister frown — 

 for he grudged not to the boy he loved the remnant 

 of the dream about to be rolled away like the dawn's 

 rosy clouds. We demanded with our eye — not with 

 our voice — one long holyday, throughout that our 

 last autumn, on to the pale farewell blossoms of the 

 Christmas rose. With our rod we went earlier to the 

 loch or river; but we had not known thoroughly our 

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