The passing interest, however, dies down again into the sleepy stolid indifference which is the outward and visible sign of that inward desire for freedom felt by each child in the school. No keen longing, but simply a dull wish to be out on the hillside, down by the burn, under the trees; anywhere away from catechisms, collects, or shoes and stockings. The last being the worst infliction of all to these wild little Highland colts accustomed for six days of the week to bare feet, since the coarse knitted hose and hobnailed boots belonging to the seventh are a direful aggravation of the tortures of Sunday school; while even the glorious gentility bestowed by a pair of side springs is but poor compensation for the discomfort to the wearer. Perhaps that was the reason why each pair of legs on the benches swayed helplessly to the rhythm of a singularly unmelodious hymn which the scholars were singing, led by the master in a muffled nasal chant. The tune itself was old and quaint, having in its recurring semitones a barbaric monotony which a lighter phrase here and there showed was not so much due to the composition in itself as to its present interpreter. The words were still more quaint, forming a sort of Litany of the Prophets, with innumerable verses and many vain repetitions. Nevertheless, it was an evident favourite with the children; partly, it may be hoped, from its own intrinsic merits, mostly, it is to be feared, from the startling novelties in Scripture history which it was capable of promulgating when, as in the present case, the schoolmaster was engaged in his secondary profession of postmaster. As the tune rose and fell, there came every now and again a pause, so sudden, so absolute that a passer-by on the dusty road might well have asked himself if some direful catastrophe had not occurred. Nothing of the sort. A glance within would have shown him everything at its usual; the scholars in rows, from the kilted urchin of four--guiltless of English--to whom school is the art of sitting still, to the girl of fourteen, blissfully conscious of a new silk handkerchief and the admiration it excites in the bashful herd-boy on the opposite bench. In the corner, at a table with a slanting desk, the master was busy sorting the letters which Donald Post, as he is called, has just brought in; the latter meanwhile mopping his hot face and disburdening his bag of minor matters in the shape of tea, sugar, and bread, and himself of the budget of news he has accumulated during his fourteen-mile walk; in an undertone, however, for the hymn goes on. "_Whair is noo' the pro-phet Dan'l?_" droned the master, followed by a wavering choir of childish trebles and gruff hobbledehoy voices, "_Whair is noo' the pro-phet Dan'l?_"