"I hope they won't be long, dear doggie." Kooran beats his tail once against the ground. This means, "Have patience, master." The sun goes down behind the hills. Then comes still Evening on. In the bonnie Scottish Highlands, reader, in sweet summer-time, or in riper autumn, we cannot say with truth that night falls; no, rather "Evening steals down." Oh! how gently she is stealing down now on the peaceful scene around Kenneth and Kooran. Far down the glen yonder, where the river broadens out in the valley, there lie long clouds of grey mist, with the tall spruce pines glimmering green and ghost-like through them. They are the trailing garments of Evening. Gradually they change to crimson as the sun's parting rays fall on them. But day lingers long on the hill-tops, among the steel-grey rocks, among boulders that stand boldly out from the dark background like blocks of snow, and among patches of purple heather. Evening sees that day must go at last, so she hies away to put the flowers to sleep. "Sleep, sleep, my gentle flowers," she says, "for the day is dying fast, and the dews will fall and blight you." She whispers to the gowans [mountain daisies] first, and the "wee modest crimson-tipped flowers" fold their petals like sea-anemones, and go softly to sleep. She lightly touches the pimpernels, the crimson and the pink-eyed, and they curl their flower-leaves and sink to rest. She breathes upon the wild convolvulus that trails among the grass, and it twists up its silken blossoms till they look like little wisps of calico, pink and white. Even the hardy heather bells creep closer together, and the star-like blossoms of the bramble that clothe the banks shrink smaller as she brushes them with her wings. Then Evening speaks to the west wind. "Blow softly, gentle west wind," she says; "blow softly through the feathery larches and the needled pines; make the leaves of the russet oaks and the silvery drooping birches sing soft lullabies, that my children the flowers may sleep." And the west wind obeys her, and goes sighing through the trees, and all the flowerets nod and sleep. The linnet has long gone to bed, close hidden under the whin bush. The tom-tit creeps closer against a patch of lichen that grows on the stem of an old ash tree. The cushat in the thicket of spruce hears the west wind's lullaby, and ceases to croodle. The blackbird and thrush hide themselves in the hawthorn tree; only the robin still sings on the top rail of the old bridge. "I will sing all night," the robin says. "I will sing with the trees and the west wind till the sun returns." "Twhoo-hoo-hoo!" shrieks the owl, and Robin flies away. Then Evening goes to the hedgehog, to the fox, to the foumart, the whitterit, the bat, and the vole. "Come out now, come out now," she cries to these, "for the moon is coming, and danger has fled with the daylight far over the hills."