in the sunlight a thousand islands oat-and-barley-gilded, and rimmed with the green and purple verdure of the turnip and rutabaga, was all set a-glow by a luminous flood from the opening clouds above.  The next moment they closed this disparted seam in their drapery, and opened a side one upon the still, grave faces of the surrounding mountains; and, for a few minutes, the smile went round from one to the other, and the great centurions of the hills looked happy and almost human in the gleam.  Then shade’s turn came in the play, and it played its part as perfectly as light.  It put in the touch of the old Italian masters, giving an everchanging background to all the sublime pictures of the panorama.

I was not alone in the enjoyment of this scenery.  For the first time in this Walk I had a companion for a day.  A clergyman from near Edinburgh joined me at Kingussie, with whom I shared the luxury of one of the most splendid views to be found in Scotland.  Indeed, few minds are so constituted as to prefer to see such natural pictures alone.  After a day’s walk among these sceneries, we came to the small village of Aviemore in the dusk of the evening.  Here we found that the only inn had been closed and turned into a private residence, and that it was doubtful if a bed could be had for love or money in the place.  The railway through it to Inverness had just been opened, and the navvies seemed still to constitute the largest portion of the population.  Neither of us had eaten any dinner, and we were hungry as well as tired.  Seeing a little, low cottage near the railroad, with the sign of something for the public good over the door, we went to it, and found that it had two rooms, one a kind of rough, stone-floored shed, the other an apartment full ten feet square, with two beds in it, which occupied half the entire space.  But, small as it was, the good man and woman made the most of it in the way of entertainment, getting up a tea occasionally for persons stopping over in the village at a meal-time, also selling small articles of grocery to the laborers.  Everything was brought from a distance, even their bread, bacon and butter.  Their stock of these fundamentals was exhausted, so that they could not give us anything with our tea until the arrival of the train from the north, which we all watched with common interest.  In the course of half an hour it came, and soon our cabin-landlord brought in a large basket full of the simplest necessaries of life, which we were quite prepared to enjoy as its best luxuries.  Soon a wood fire blazed for us in the double-bedded parlor, and the unpainted deal table was spread in the fire-light with a repast we relished with a pleasant appreciation.