had slighted the counsels and neglected the wishes of her gentle monitress; how she had wearied of her good old aunts, their cracked voices, and the everlasting tic-a-tic of their knitting needles; how coarse and vulgar she had sometimes deemed the younger ones; how she had mimicked Lady Maclaughlan, and caricatured Sir Sampson, and “even poor dear old Donald,” said she, as she summed up the catalogue of her crimes, “could not escape my insolence and ill-nature.  How clever I thought it to sing ‘Haud awa frae me, Donald,’ and how affectedly I shuddered at everything he touched;” and the “sneeshin mull” was bedewed with tears of affectionate contrition.  But every painful sentiment was for a while suspended in admiration of the magnificent scenery that was spread around them.  Though summer had fled, and few even of autumn’s graces remained, yet over the august features of mountain scenery the seasons have little control.  Their charms depend not upon richness of verdure, or luxuriance of foliage, or any of the mere prettinesses of nature; but whether wrapped in snow, or veiled in mist, or glowing in sunshine, their lonely grandeur remains the same; and the same feelings fill and elevate the soul in contemplating these mighty works of an Almighty hand.  The eye is never weary in watching the thousand varieties of light and shade, as they flit over the mountain and gleam upon the lake; and the ear is satisfied with the awful stillness of nature in her solitude.

Others besides Mary seemed to have taken a fanciful pleasure in combining the ideas of the mental and elemental world, for in the dreary dwelling where they were destined to pass the night she found inscribed the following lines:—­

    “The busy winds war mid the waving bonghs,
    And darkly rolls the heaving surge to land;
    Among the flying clouds the moonbeam glows
    With colours foreign to its softness bland.

    “Here, one dark shadow melts, in gloom profound,
    The towering Alps—­the guardians of the Lake’;
    There, one bright gleam sheds silver light around,
    And shows the threat’ning strife that tempests wake.

    “Thus o’er my mind a busy memory plays,
    That shakes the feelings to their inmost core;
    Thus beams the light of Hope’s fallacious ray,
    When simple confidence can trust no more.

“So one dark shadow shrouds each bygone hour, So one bright gleam the coming tempest shows; That tells of sorrows, which, though past, still lower, And this reveals th’ approach of future woes.”

While Mary was trying to decipher these somewhat mystic lines, her uncle was carrying on a colloquy in Gaelic with their hostess.  The consequendes of the consultation were not of the choicest description, consisting of braxy [1] mutton, raw potatoes, wet bannocks, hard cheese, and whisky.  Very differently would the travellers have fared had the good Nicky’s intentions