CHRISTOPHER IN HIS SPORTING JACKET 



own soul — for now we angled less passionately — less 

 perseveringly than was our wont of yore — sitting in a 

 pensive — a melancholy — a miserable dream, by the 

 dashing waterfall — or the murmuring wave. With 

 our gun we plunged earlier in the morning into the 

 forest, and we returned later at eve — but less ear- 

 nest — less eager were we to hear the cushat's moan 

 from his yew-tree — to see the hawk's shadow on the 

 glade, as he hung aloft on the sky. A thousand dead 

 thoughts came to life again in the gloom of the 

 woods — and we sometimes did wring our hands in an 

 agony of grief, to know that our eyes should not be- 

 hold the birch-tree brightening there with another 

 spring. 



Then every visit we paid to cottage or to shieling 

 was felt to be a farewell; there was something mourn- 

 ful in the smiles on the sweet faces of the ruddy rus- 

 tics, with their silken snoods, to whom we used to 

 whisper harmless love-meanings, in which there was 

 no evil guile; we regarded the solemn toil-and-care- 

 worn countenances of the old with a profounder emo- 

 tion than had ever touched our hearts in the hour of 

 our more thoughtless joy; and the whole life of those 

 dwellers among the woods, and the moors, and the 

 mountains, seemed to us far more affecting now that 

 we saw deeper into it, in the light of a melancholy 

 sprung from the conviction that the time was close at 

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