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 savoury 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 rosebush on the further bank was violently agitated, and then there ran from its root a black-headed rat with wings.