by night the dome was strewn with shimmering hosts of brittle stars that seemed to crackle in the cold; the sun went down each afternoon empurpled by the weather; the bone-dry countryside was hard as tempered metal; and the highways tinkled underfoot like glass. Poor sheep, trembling in the fanks! birds chittering on unsheltered boughs! But strong landward men were happy in that weather. Schawfield was become a place where work was only for women, and their husbands played as in the glorious ancient days of mastery. Only the village baker, hoary himself as if with frost, smashing the ice on his sponging-tubs, or cleaning his oven-sole with a frozen scuffle, was compelled to his daily tasks by the appetites of men, which ever grow more exigent in sport and cold. The blacksmith threw aside his leathern apron, damped his fire, put a rubber ferrule on his timber leg, and spent his days upon the ice. Heaven favored Divvert with an epidemic of the mumps that closed his school. Merchant bodies balanced their books at nights; farmers, with their cattle steaming snug in byres, gave no glance at their fields from that first morning they had hurried past them behind a cart of curling-stones. Even Dr. Cleghorn, on a Friday, dragged himself back to the study from the Whiggate Loch with anguish.

Sir Andrew curled, as the blacksmith said, like a man who had done it for a living all his days, and the Hunt was off so long as the wind was North. Norah and Maurice skated on the long, wide river-pool below the bridge. Sometimes, coming home at night, with a weariness that was like a balm to every bone, the baronet would stop, unseen, upon the bank and hear their merry voices echoing under the limey arch. They seemed to occupy another world: he might have been a ghost, so distant did they seem from him, en

The very

grossed in young delights. night, o'erwhelming and contemplative, appeared to stand outside with him and murmur "Passing! - passing!-passing!" He would go into Fancy Farm to a Spartan meal and a remonstrant Aunt Amelia.

"Come back earlier to-night," she counselled him one morning; "Norah and I are expecting visitors." He was so keen upon his practice for a bonspiel that their interchange of comprehending glances quite escaped him, and it was like him that he should never ask who the visitors might be.

"Oh, I'll be home early," he assured her. "In any case you need not delay dinner."

"You can't stay curling after dark, at least," said Miss Amelia.

"Dear Aunt," said he, "there are such things as candles, and the weather looks like changing. I'm entirely in the hands of providence-and Paterson."

"Paterson?" she repeated on a note of question.

"The eminent poacher," said Sir Andrew laughing, as he donned his curler's bonnet; "he is skip of our rink to-day."

He walked to the loch; the weather looked like anything but change; John Frost had taken the universe in his hands and squeezed from it the final drop of moisture. In a windless air the woods seemed turned to phantom trees on which no green should ever come again, but beautiful, most intricate! Old snow, drifted in the ditches, showed the tracks of birds and the devices of those eerie beasts that lope across the fields at midnight; a fine wild Arctic sentiment, a hint of chaos, and the chilled and puckered landscape of the moon was everywhere-in creases of the plain, no longer flat, but showing dip and mound with purple shadows, in frozen little waterfalls and icy columns in below the banks. A

scent, unnameable, of earth congealed, and rotten leaves, corrupt no longer, but all cleansed by the arresting and aseptic agent, gave to the day a tonic quality that made him feel omnipotent, and set him whistling like a boy.

The loch was in a fold of the foothills, hid behind a wood of sombre pines. As he walked between their naked columns with his footsteps deafened by the fallen needles, and while yet a good way off, he heard the booming of the ice, responsive to the channel-stones; the tiny glen appeared to hum as if its ribs were tightened cords plucked to some inner resonance by the jocund gods. A moment came to him there and then which seemed to concentrate the gladness of a year-an ecstasy that was like an inward ache, that rare and curious mood when we seem on the verge of knowing immortality while yet in our fleshy cells.

He shouted at this wizard portal of the spirit, like a boy again, half fearful of its loneliness and mystery, and the echoes of his voice went clanging like to shaken brass against the precipices. A few steps more and he stood above the loch, and heard the players on its surface crying in the vigor of their game.

"Come awa', laird!" cried his poacher skip; "we're tired waiting on ye, and the factor's got your stanes!"

"They couldna be in better hands," replied Sir Andrew; "let him finish the end" and he watched the majestic Cattanach, ponderous on earth, on ice mercurial, deliver a well-laid stone. "A little more elbow-in and he would hae been a better man!" he added hastily as he saw the stone go narrow. "The same might be said at ony time o' friend Clashgour," said Cattanach, prone to Celtic jibings at the farmer who was never ashamed of his prowess with a bottle. "It would make a splendid motto for his heid-stane."

Sir Andrew took that place in the

rink which his factor had kept open for him, and all forenoon 'twas he who kept the poacher's side on the road to victory; rapt in the game as if to curl were human destiny; caressing the Ailsa stones as if he loved them; sending them to their object with an impetus that seemed unfit to carry them half the way, yet had behind it the unseen propulsion of that iron wrist. Withal he played in silence-a thing unusual in the roaring game, and his stance upon the crampit had a curious kind of grace unlike the humped contortions of his comrades.

"Man! laird, ye play like a perfect lady!" cried the rapturous poacher; "ye put doon the stane and it goes to the mark itsel'. Soop up, Macrae! Soop up! I like ye weel, Sir Andra! Tut! tut! ye idiot, ye've given him the shot! I beg your pardon."

Sir Andrew laughed: in the roaring game even a Scottish earl may be an idiot to a poacher who can play. James Birrell, defying rules, and trotting behind his stone with his head side-tilted and his legs in writhing sympathy with the inward curve of his Crawfordjohns, played wretchedly, but always claimed for his poorest shots that at least they lodged a caveat, making a "bonny guard." Clashgour used his broom with an intense ferocity, as if he were mucking byres, and would have sworn like a trooper if the minister and laird had not been there; the poacher skipped with a seaman's shouts that rang among the hills; Tam Dunn, the post-boy of the Schawfield Arms, drew to an inch, or clapped on guards with all the surety of some uncanny mechanism.

"Tam Dunn! Tam Dunn! ye're my very brither!" cried the ecstatic baronet on whose side he played. "Ye're a curler!"

"I might be waur, laird!" said the post-boy.

Divvert, glad of a sport wherein,

for once, he could be equal with the folk to whom as yet in other things he was an incomer from whom little was to be expected, was master of a twist that promised to establish his reputation; the minister with his black coat ludicrously walloping, and a cap with flaps tied over his ears that he might not hear, as he said, the objurgations of Clashgour, bent low upon his knees at each delivery as if he sent his stone upon its mission with a silent intercession; the blacksmith, skipping from end to end of the rink with his wooden leg more serviceable than an ordinary member, called it "Jessie" in a jovial spirit, half irony, half affection.

"Two up again. Jess! You and me for bonny curlers!" he would say, with a comical stamp of the rubber ferrule on the ice.

A meal had come to the loch at midday: hot scouse from the kitchen of Mrs. Nish, still scalding, they had placed the pots below some coverings on the ice to await their appetites, which as yet were lagging behind the passion of the game. When they went at last for the pots they were invisible the holes they had melted for themselves the only evidence of their fate! Ribaldry for the stupid man who had drowned a dinner; a hasty messenger to Mrs. Nish again, and that marvellous lady rose to the situation! The men of the rinks stood on the banks devouring mightily; a world of drift and rime was round them; pinched black trees against the white expanse of brae and moor; a region tenantless; without a single smoking chimney, and, save for their gobbling and gabbling, silent as the very death. Sir Andrew, standing apart a moment smoking, put his hands upon his ears and looked upon the scene as he would on a picture by Wilkie, Van Ostade, or Teniers. He had again his old familiar illusion-of men, and hills, and weather, Time itself, at pause, eternally

arrested, as it might be, in a gesture; he saw with clarity all life and the seeming habitable globe a bubble bearing on its iridescent upper sides brief images of things exterior. "I do not know-I cannot guess-" he told himself; "but here we are, knowing each other's voices, dare we be anything but loyal to each other?" A passion for his kind for the time possessed him, and he loved (as he told me later, I always give but his own daft fancies)-he loved the very crutch of Alick Brodie!

And now there came, with the resumption of the game, the first step of another cantrip of the Captain's (if follies have beginning in some special hour), an escapade on which depends this story. Had Tam Dunn played a poorer game that afternoon, or been a man with extravagant views of what was requisite in a post-boy's headgear; or had the teacher Divvert not unhappily (or happily, as the case may be) recalled a play of Shakespeare, Sir Andrew Schaw might never have found his ideal lady. 'Tis sure, at least, he had not found her under circumstances quite so ludicrous.

Destiny (always presuming some starting-point in that mesh wherein men struggle like the herring of the trawl-net, thinking they are free) decreed that after the meal upon the bank the afternoon should open with a change of rinks and players, and the baronet was skip against the skipping of the post-boy. They had chosen sides, and Sir Andrew pledged himself to pay for a hat for his opponent if he won the game.

"And what if I should lose?" asked the cautious post-boy.

Sir Andrew had for a moment the gentle thought to make the wager applicable either way, but he could not hide from himself the probability that the cost of a hat was like to make a serious hole in a post-boy's wages.

"In that case, we cry quits," said he, "The hat's a prize."

"Na, na," said Tam, "a wadger's aye a wadger, and I hae a hat already. I'm thinkin' I would be better aff, sir, if I had your heid instead o' your hat."

Sir Andrew smiled; he knew the compliment implied was one which in many quarters would be regarded as more polite than it was judicial. "You're better wi' the hat," said he; "it's likely to be more in fashion. Wi' my head ye wouldna have so good a reputation as a steady driver."

"Oh, I've seen ye drive, Sir Andra!" said Tam Dunn.

Clashgour, who, chosen in another rink, stood with his besom ready to join in, and bold with ale, ventured in bucolic humor his opinion that the prize would be more worth playing for if Schawfield House and property went with the hat; and Divvert, caught up in this intoxicating air of a democracy where all men spoke their minds and baronets were in the vein for banter, made allusion to the nightcap, which in "The Taming of the Shrew" was a symbol of the tinker's changed condition.

"Paucas pallabris! let the world, slide, sessa!" cried Sir Andrew, slapping his leg; "I see a better wager; thank you, Mr. Divvert! I'll not endow Tam Dunn with Schawfield--that would be a scurvy trick upon an honest curler; but the lord shall be Christopher Sly. I'll be the post-boy for the rest of the night if Dunn defeats me."

The joke, to all but Jamie Birrell, had no meaning, and it sent them laughing out upon the ice: the lawyer had an uneasy recollection that so many of Sir Andrew's follies started just as airily as this. Himself in Sir Andrew's rink, the thought of the possibilities made his playing worse than usual. Somehow he felt that he played for his client's dignity, and in his very

carefulness he often failed to reach the hog.

"Play up, man!" cried his skip; "like Dr. Cleghorn, ye're ower often out o' the parish. See, Mr. Birrell, my besom's on the tee."

But Mr. Birrell, with only a vague surmise at the story of Christopher Sly, and a knowledge that Sir Andrew never gave his word in vain, so ruminated on the outcome of the match that he played as if he were blindfolded. And the post-boy playing like a warlock!

"Oh, Lord! Jessie," said the blacksmith to his wooden leg, in a colloquy apart, "the law's very fine, but we were better wi' the poacher!"

And the hours went past, and the dusk came on; wild geese withdrew across the pines; owls challenged from the woods. "Twas not as if the Night came on, but rather as if Day withdrew and fled behind the hills; suddenly the players felt the dark.

One end more and the play was done: Tam Dunn came off the ice a victor. "Five up, Sir Andrew; no' bad curlin'," he remarked; "it took us a' oor time," and the lawyer in the dusk cocked a wondering eye at his client.

"That's a hat for ye, Tam," said the baronet.

"I have a quite guid hat already," answered the post-boy. "I got it a couple o' year ago, and a second would be rideeculous superfluity. It's no' that often there's a funeral."

Sir Andrew threw his stones upon the bank and then shook hands with the conqueror. "I congratulate you," said he; "the best side won, and the hat is yours. What hae ye got to do the night?"

"O Lord!" said Mr. Birrell to himself with hands uplifted.

"I've to feed twa horse and tak' anither pair in a carriage to Duntryne to meet a lady comin' wi' the boat," replied the post-boy readily, well aware

that Sir Andrew had an interest in everything.

"Phew!" the Baronet whistled, "I hadna' bargained on a hire, my Christopher; at the most I thought to be bedding horses. Still, there's the wager, so I'll trouble ye to let me hae your whip. If I'm to be at Duntryne to meet the boat it's nearly time that I was yokin'."

Cattanach, at that, retired behind the company and gave his views in Gaelic to the stars; James Birrell choked in a spasm of dumb vexation; the others standing by, incredulous that even Captain Cutlass would play a prank so foolish, laughed at Tam Dunn, who scratched his head and wondered that a gentleman so temperate should have such droll ideas. "Dod! ye werena in earnest, sir," said he; "I wouldna hae ta'en ye on if I thocht ye were in earnest."

"I was never mair earnest in a' my life; didn't I gie my word?" said Captain Cutlass, leading the way through the planting.

The

Twenty minutes later, in the light of a tin lantern spraying radiance from its pin-holes, he and Tam Dunn between them yoked the horses in the stable behind the Schawfield Arms; the baronet took the reins, and with a flourish of his whip quitted the yard, dashed past the inn, and down through the nigh deserted village street. lighted little windows of the open shops glowing out upon the trodden snow did not betray him to the passers-by, and his Kilmarnock bonnet was drawn down upon his brow. Rumbling through the street he chuckled to himself with real enjoyment, wondering what his aunt would say if she could see him in his latest escapade. when the tenements were left behind, and he was in the darkness of the open highway, with his lamps revealing hurrying hedges that seemed made of coral, he found the icy nature of the 2698 LIVING AGE. VOL. LI.

But

road demanded all his skill in driving, and a kind of stubborn vanity kept his mind engaged: Lord, but he loved a horse! No whip for him! He thrust it into its socket, and with his hands that seemed to feel each slip of the hoof before the horse itself was cognizant, he kept them up and going, talking with them cheerily in the dark

ness.

And yet he was somewhat late of coming to Duntryne; the steamer was in and gone again on her other calls along the coast, and the quay was quite deserted, save for the muffled figure of a woman standing under its single lamp beside a little pile of baggage.

He saw her face as he descended, touching his cap as the man would have done for whom he was the deputy.

"Are you from Schawfield?" she asked him, a little sharply.

"Yes, madam," he answered meekly, still Tam Dunn. "I'm sorry if I have kept you waiting."

"I've been waiting here for nearly half an hour; you've made a pretty mess of it!" said the lady, throwing a rug into the carriage, whose door he had opened for her. The lamplight struck him full in the face as he lifted part of her baggage; something of race in the shaven countenance woke her interest, and she hastily took out her rug again. "I love the night," said she, breathing it with a gusto that he liked "It's not so very cold, and I prefer to ride outside." Before he could say a word she was vaulting to the box.

to see.

This, indeed, was a little more than he had bargained for, but he thrust the baggage where he would have put the lady, climbed to the seat beside her, carefully wrapped the rug around her and drove on.

"To the devil with Mr. Birrell as a curler!" to himself said Captain Cut

lass.