The morn was indeed fair, the sky cloudless, and the sea as calm as a mill-pond; a study, too, it was in blue, with patches of green where the sand showed through, patches of darkest brown near to the shore, where the sea-weed floated on the waves like mermaids’ hair.
Barclay and Davie had met each other at seven o’clock, had bathed together, and were now high up among the braes, and far above Mrs. Stuart’s little cottage.
They were bird-nesting.
But, pray, do not mistake me. They were not lads of the guttersnipe class, who find nests but to rob them. Both had good mothers, who had taught them that God loves His song-birds, ay, even to the bickering sparrow, “not one of which shall fall to the ground without the Father,” that is, unless He permits it.
But there were nests of all kinds in every bush and tree: the linnet in the golden-scented furze—ah! how sweet and tender his song; the blackbird in the hedge; the cosy wee wren’s nest, perhaps in the cleft of some hollow tree; the dove in the thickets of spruce, who purred all day long like a cat; the loud lilting mavis with her greenish blue and black-spotted eggs; the chaffinch’s nest, the prettiest in the world in a notch in the lichen-covered larch; the hedge-sparrow’s, with eggs of sweetest blue. Oh, but I could not mention half the nests they visited this morning.
But some, such as those of the chattering magpie and the hawk, were high up in old pine trees, so that—
“When the wind blew, the cradle would rock.”
For two hours they wandered about in woods and wilds, and then the wind did begin to blow.
Barclay was away on the top of one of the highest pine-trees, where a “hoody crow’s” nest swayed and swung; he had brought some morsels of meat for the poor bird, and these he deposited on a branch.
He stayed a little to look about him from his glorious elevation. Then he shouted, sailor-fashion—