We filled our pipes in silence. Though it was only late noon, the light seemed to be darkening in my little room. I looked toward the window, and down from a dull leaden sky the first of winter's snowflakes were quietly falling--falling, as it appeared to me, into the eager upstretched arms of the leafless lime. The doctor's gaze followed mine; and slowly, with his pipe filled but not lit, he rose from his chair and looked long and thoughtfully toward the quiet, obscured Dry Gill. 'I have always loved to see snow falling,' he said, after a pause. 'It has a strange fascination for me; and to see it in its fleecy flakes, whirling and dancing and drifting and playing, is a sight which always soothes and inspires me. I pray God that my eyesight may long be spared to me, because it is an avenue through which many of His richly stored treasures are conveyed. I have no ear for music--instrumental music I mean particularly; but, strangely enough, a wimplin' burn can speak to me in its flow, a mavis can call me from my study into my garden, and the eerie yammer of the whaup in the moorland solitude is always to me, as it is to Robert Wanlock, "a wanderin' word frae hame." The human voice raised in song conveys nothing to me, but the crooning lullaby of a loving mother over her suffering child tirls the strings of my heart and makes me humble. To be unable to _feel_ the pleading of the violin, the rich soprano, and the resonant bass is something I deplore. But Providence has ordained that if one sense is minus one, another sense will be plus one. Well, my sense of sight is plus one, both in strength and appreciation; and in the midst of these beautiful surroundings in which, for the last forty years, my lines have been cast, I have revelled, William--positively revelled. The opportunity has always been mine of noting the changing of the seasons--the virgin green and promise of spring, the glory and fullness of summer, the russet and gold of autumn, the sleep and decay of winter--and each, to him who can see aright, has a beauty and significance of its own. Ay, and this is winter--winter heralded by a shimmering veil of pirling snowflakes, through whose dancing meshes I can trace phantom forms I saw in youth, and whose madcap antics still, thank God! bring me solace as of yore. Oh, how grateful and thankful I ought to be!'