conversation just above a whisper, the elder of the two--and he not
twenty, while the other was apparently only sixteen--first read,
with full Scotch accent, one of the hard-rhymed psalms used in the
Scotch service. Then, after a short pause, he read with a low,
solemn voice a chapter in the Bible. A few minutes of silence
succeeded, as if a wordless prayer was going upward upon the still
wings of thought, which made no audible beating in their flight. It
was very impressive; an incident that I shall ever hold among the
most interesting of all I met with on my walk. They were not
brothers evidently, but most likely strangers thrown together on the
railroad. They doubtless came from different directions, but, from
Highlands or Lowlands, they came from Bible-lighted homes, whose
"voices of the night" were blended with the breathings of religious
life and instruction. Separated from such homes, they had agreed to
make this one after the same spiritual pattern, barring the parental
presence and teaching.

The next day after breakfast, took leave of my kind cottage hosts,
exchanging good wishes for mutual happiness. Went out of the
amphitheatre of Strathspey by a gateway into another, surrounded by
mountains less lofty and entirely covered with heather. For several
miles beyond Carr Bridge I passed over the wildest moorland. The
road was marked by posts about ten feet high, painted white within
two feet of the top and black above. These are planted about
fifteen rods apart, to guide the traveller in the drifting and
blinding snows of winter. The road over this cold, desolate waste
exceeded anything I ever saw in America, even in the most
fashionable suburbs of New York and Boston. It was as smooth and
hard as a cement floor. Here on this treeless wild, I met several
men at work trimming the edges of the road by a line, with as much