to teach them the doctrine of the survival of the fittest. A weasel had
gripped a water-hen (whit-tit and beltie they are called In these
parts) cowering at the root of the rose-bush, and was being dragged
down the bank by the terrified bird, which made for the water as its
only chance of escape. In less disadvantageous circumstances the weasel
would have made short work of his victim; but as he only had the bird
by the tail, the prospects of the combatants were equalized. It was the
tug-of-war being played with a life as the stakes. "If I do not reach
the water," was the argument that went on in the heaving little breast
of the one, "I am a dead bird." "If this water-hen," reasoned the
other, "reaches the burn, my supper vanishes with her." Down the
sloping bank the hen had distinctly the best of it, but after that
came a yard, of level snow, and here she tugged and screamed in vain.
I had so far been an unobserved spectator; but my sympathies were with
the beltie, and, thinking it high time to interfere, I jumped into the
water. The water-hen gave one mighty final tug and toppled into the
burn; while the weasel viciously showed me his teeth, and then stole
slowly up the bank to the rose-bush, whence, "girning," he watched me
lift his exhausted victim from the water, and set off with her for the
school-house. Except for her draggled tail, she already looks
wonderfully composed, and so long as the frost holds I shall have little
difficulty in keeping her with me. On Sunday I found a frozen sparrow,
whose heart had almost ceased to beat, in the disused pigsty, and put
him for warmth into my breast-pocket. The ungrateful little scrub bolted
without a word of thanks about ten minutes afterward, to the alarm of my
cat, which had not known his whereabouts.

I am alone in the school-house. On just such an evening as this last
year my desolation drove me to Waster Lunny, where I was storm-stayed
for the night. The recollection decides me to court my own warm