The kail grows brittle from the snow in my dank and cheerless
garden. A crust of bread gathers timid pheasants round me. The
robins, I see, have made the coal-house their home. Waster Lunny's
dog never barks without rousing my sluggish cat to a joyful response.
It is Dutch courage with the birds and beasts of the glen, hard
driven for food; but I look attentively for them in these long
forenoons, and they have begun to regard me as one of themselves. My
breath freezes, despite my pipe, as I peer from the door: and with a
fortnight-old newspaper I retire to the ingle-nook. The friendliest
thing I have seen to-day is the well-smoked ham suspended, from my
kitchen rafters. It was a gift from the farm of Tullin, with a load
of peats, the day before the snow began to fall. I doubt if I have
seen a cart since.

This afternoon I was the not altogether passive spectator of a
curious scene in natural history. My feet encased in stout "tackety"
boots, I had waded down two of Waster Lunny's fields to the glen
burn: in summer the never-failing larder from which, with wriggling
worm or garish fly, I can any morning whip a savory breakfast; in
the winter time the only thing in the valley that defies the ice-king's
chloroform. I watched the water twisting black and solemn through the
snow, the ragged ice on its edge proof of the toughness of the struggle
with the frost, from which it has, after all, crept only half
victorious. A bare wild rose-bush on the farther bank was violently
agitated, and then there ran from its root a black-headed rat with
wings. Such was the general effect. I was not less interested when my
startled eyes divided this phenomenon into its component parts, and
recognized in the disturbance on the opposite bank only another fierce
struggle among the hungry animals for existence: they need no professor