Then nature was at her height in the Glen, and had given us of her fulness.

The barley was golden, and, rustling in the gentle wind, wearied for the scythe; the oats were changing daily, and had only so much greenness as would keep the feathery heads firm for the handling; the potatoes having received the last touch of the plough, were well banked up and flowering pleasantly; the turnips, in fine levels, like Hillocks', or gently sloping fields, like Menzies', were so luxuriant that a mere townsman could not have told the direction of the drills; the hay had been gathered into long stacks like unto the shape of a two-storied house, and the fresh aftermath on the field was yielding sweet morsels for the horses of an evening; the pasture was rich with the hardy white clover, and one could hear from the road the cattle taking full mouthfuls; young spring animals, like calves and lambs, were now falling into shape and beginning independent life, though with an occasional hankering after the past, when the lambs would fall a-bleating for their mothers, and calves would hang about the gate at evening, where they had often fought shamelessly to get a frothy nose once more into the milk-pail.
Our little gardens were full a-blow, a very blaze and maze of colour and foliage, wherein the owner wandered of an evening examining flowers and fruit with many and prolonged speculations--much aided by the smoke of tobacco--as to the chance of gaining a second at our horticultural show with his stocks, or honourable mention for a dish of mixed fruit.
The good wife might be seen of an afternoon about that time, in a sun-bonnet and a gown carefully tucked up, gathering her berry harvest for preserves, with two young assistants, who worked at a modest distance from their mother, very black as to their mouths, and preserving the currants, as they plucked them, by an instantaneous process of their own invention.

Next afternoon a tempting fragrance of boiling sugar would make one's mouth water as he passed, and the same assistants, never weary in well-doing, might be seen setting saucers of black jam upon the window-sill to "jeel," and receiving, as a kind of blackmail, another saucerful of "skim," which, I am informed, is really the refuse of the sugar, but, for all that, wonderfully toothsome.
Bear with a countryman's petty foolishness, ye mighty people who live in cities, and whose dainties come from huge manufactories.

Some man reading these pages will remember that red-letter day of the summer-time long ago, and the faithful hands that plucked the fruit, and the old kitchen, with its open beams, and the peat fire glowing red, and the iron arm that held the copper-lined pan--much lent round the district--and the smack of the hot, sweet berries, more grateful than any banquet of later days.
[Illustration: Gathering her berry harvest.] The bees worked hard in this time of affluence, and came staggering home with spoil from the hills, but it was holiday season on the farms.
Between the last labours on the roots and the beginning of harvest there was no exacting demand from the land, and managing farmers invented tasks to fill up the hours.

An effort was made to restore carts and implements to their original colour, which was abruptly interrupted by the first day of cutting, so that one was not surprised to see a harvest cart blue on one side and a rich crusted brown on the other.