CHAPTEE LIV. 



Approach of Winter — Contentedness of the People — Poets and Wild-Bird Song — Differences in 

 the Colouring and Markings of Birds' Eggs — Late Nest-Building— Anecdote of Provost 

 Robertson of Dingwall, Mr. Gladstone's Grandfather. 



The meteorological vaticinations of our weather-wise octogenarian 

 neighbours have met with abundant and speedy verification in the 

 storms and heavy rains of the past ten days [October 1876]. For 

 the month of October, however, the weather continues wonderfully 

 mild ; even with wind and rain the temperature is higher than it 

 usually is at this date ; an occasional fine day, besides, encouraging 

 us in the hope that winter proper, winter with its thousand dis- 

 comforts, its snow and sleet, its cold and cheerlessness and gloom, 

 may be checked in his advance for some weeks to come, by the 

 uncompromising attitude of an autumn so lusty of life and bright 

 of eye, but, despite an occasional overclouding of countenance, it 

 seems yet but only little past its prime. Agriculturally the season is 

 being wound up satisfactorily enough ; crops have, upon the whole, 

 been secured in very fair condition, and although the herring fishing 

 in our lochs as elsewhere has proved a failure, our people are 

 prepared to meet the coming winter in comparative abundance, and 

 with a cheerfulness calculated to disarm the gloomy season of more 

 than half its terrors. The poet has philosophically observed that 



man 



" Wants but little here below, 

 Nor wants that little long " — 



where " wants," you will observe, has to be read in a restricted and 

 peculiar sense : the plain prose of it being, that for all his essential 



