At morning hour you would have seen the honest weavers, who peopled most of the houses, busying themselves in delving and dibbling in these little patches of ground. During the long day, perhaps nothing of life was to be seen about them, except the circumspect and decent hen walking up the avenue with her chirping brood, or the cock flapping his wings from the top of the wall, and crowing a defiance to some distant foe of his own kind: or the bees, as they one by one made themselves visible out of the universal sunniness, in the immediate shadow of the hive. At night, however, the weaver would be seen walking forth with his pipe in his mouth, his Kilmarnock cowl brushed back from his forehead, and his clothes loose at the knees, to observe the growth of the berries, or pull a bunch of lily-oak for his children, who came prattling behind him; or to hold converse through the evening stillness with a neighbour perhaps four gardens off, respecting the last proceedings of “that dreedfu’ fallow, Bonyparty.” When standing in the centre of the village, you might have almost been persuaded that there was no other place in the world. The rim of the horizon was within two hundred yards of the eye all round, and nothing besides was to be seen but the contracted sky. On the top of the bank, in one direction, stood the church, with its little docked steeple, and its body-guard of old trees. In another direction there was a peep of the turrets of an old half-ruined mansion-house, which had not been occupied for many years, except by the spirit of a murdered man, which was understood to occupy a particular room, and always went by the horribly descriptive name of _Spotty_. Beyond the edge of the surrounding banks, the country swept downwards in extensive flats, generally sterile, but here and there showing fine spots of pastoral green. Over these downs, groups of children would sometimes be seen rambling hand in hand, in those adventurous journeys of half a mile from home, which children are so fond of taking; sometimes talking to each other of the novelties of the created world, which were every now and then striking their eyes and their imaginations; at other times pondering in silent and infantine abstraction on the beauty of the gowans which grew by their sides, and in the bosoms of which, as they gazed into them, they saw, reflected as in a mirror, their own fairness and innocence. There, also, while the wind even of summer carried its chill, the little neat-herd boy would be seen sitting on the leeward side of the green knoll, with his sister by his side, and a plaid drawn all around them, their arms laced round each other’s necks, and their cheeks laid close together, as both read from the same tattered story book, or partook of the same pease-bread and milk, which served as their afternoon meal. Within the village all was primeval simplicity. The houses already mentioned were arranged