feat in the game, and children shouted and dogs barked from the mere contagion of joy, while, moreover, the sun sent his last rich rays through the trees above the village, whence the “——Sweet mellow crush of the wood-pigeon’s note, Made music that sweetened the calm;” there a stranger might have supposed that happiness had found her last abode on earth, ere for ever winging her flight to her native skies. Many villages in Scotland enjoy a humble local fame for some particular custom or sport, which is understood to reign there in supremacy over all others. If Daldaff was celebrated for any form of fun more than another, it was for curling—a sport peculiar to Scotland, and which may be best described to southern readers, by the simple statement, that it employs large smooth stones upon the ice, much after the manner of bowls upon a bowling-green. The game can only be practised after a very hard frost, as it requires the strongest ice to bear the numbers who usually assemble either to play or look on. Curling is a game relished so keenly in Scotland, that, like other common appetites, it levels all distinctions of station and rank. In a rural and thinly-peopled district like that around Daldaff, the laird might be seen mingling with not only his farmers, but his cottagers, interchanging the broad jest at his own failures, and giving applause wherever it was due. The minister might also be seen driving his stone with as much anxiety of eye as any one, and occasionally, perhaps, envying the good fortune of an unlettered peasant, whom, on another occasion, he would have to chide for his backwardness in the Single Catechism. Daldaff was fortunately situated for this game, as, less than a mile below the village, the mountain stream spread out into a little lake sufficient to have afforded room for half a dozen “rinks.” There one Saturday afternoon the people of Daldaff had a _bonspiel_, or grand contest, with the inhabitants of the adjacent parish of Sarkinholm, who had long disputed with them the palm of superiority. A bonspiel is not appointed to take place every day; neither is Saturday like any other day of the week. Hence, although an unfortunate thaw was just commencing, the disputants resolved to have out their game, trusting that the ice would at least last long enough to do their turn. Notwithstanding the unfavourable state of the ice, the bonspiel passed off with great eclat. Nearly all Daldaff and Sarkinholm were collected to witness the sport; and the _certaminis gaudia_, or joys of the combat, were felt perhaps as keenly in the hearts of the women and children of these respective places, as in those of the curlers themselves. Before the game was done, the men were standing inch deep in water, and the stones, as they came up to the rink, sent the spray high into the air before them, like shavings from a joiner’s plane. The short day of January was also drawing very near to a close, and a deep