gaze for a week, I see the steading of Waster Lunny sunk deeper into
the waste. The school-house, I suppose, serves similarly as a snow-mark
for the people at the farm. Unless that is Waster Lunny's grieve
foddering the cattle in the snow, not a living thing is visible. The
ghostlike hills that pen in the glen have ceased to echo to the sharp
crack of the sportsman's gun (so clear in the frosty air as to be a
warning to every rabbit and partridge in the valley); and only giant
Catlaw shows here and there a black ridge, rearing his head at the
entrance to the glen and struggling ineffectually to cast off his
shroud. Most wintry sign of all I think, as I close the window hastily,
is the open farm-stile, its poles lying embedded in the snow where they
were last flung by Waster Lunny's herd. Through the still air comes
from a distance a vibration as of a tuning-fork: a robin, perhaps,
alighting on the wire of a broken fence.

In the warm kitchen, where I dawdle over my breakfast, the widowed
bantam-hen has perched on the back of my drowsy cat. It is needless
to go through the form of opening the school to-day; for, with the
exception of Waster Lunny's girl, I have had no scholars for nine
days. Yesterday she announced that there would be no more schooling
till it was fresh, "as she wasna comin';" and indeed, though the
smoke from the farm chimneys is a pretty prospect for a snowed-up
school-master, the trudge between the two houses must be weary work
for a bairn. As for the other children, who have to come from all
parts of the hills and glen, I may not see them for weeks. Last year
the school was practically deserted for a month. A pleasant outlook,
with the March examinations staring me in the face, and an inspector
fresh from Oxford. I wonder what he would say if he saw me to-day
digging myself out of the school-house with the spade I now keep for
the purpose in my bedroom.