Nor was Jack's lore confined to the creatures of the air and land. Down the mountain sides trills many a gushing stream to join the Diggle Brook, pellucid waters murmuring over the worn pebbles and larger fragments of volcanic rock that still, to this day, resist the action of the fretting air and pelting storm. Who so deft a hand as Jack at tickling the shy trout that darted among the sedges and rushes of the banks or lurked beneath leaf and boulder motionless as the stones themselves. And if the matron, when the dainty fish graced her table was not scrupulous to ask whence came this toothsome addition to the dietary approved by my lords in London town, whose business was it to interfere? Ah! It is grand upon the billowing hills to wander idly in the sweet spring-time; to mark the lark rising above its nest high in the azure sky, trilling joyous melody, to hear the lambs calling to their dams, to see the kine cropping pensive, in the meadows the sweet new blades of the greening grass; sweet is it to bask at mid-day nodding on the heather and lulled to sleep by the hum that, like distant muffled music, just falls upon the ear, and sweet too, is it as the western sun drops to its rosy curtained couch, to call the cows with their swelling udders from pasture to their byre; sweet to stand by rustic maid of rosy cheek and buxom form as, piggin betwixt her knees and head pressed on the flanks of patient and grateful beast, she strains the warm and frothy fluid to the can. Glorious, too, to hearken to the whetstone drawn by practised hand across the scythe, to bear its swish as the swathe lengthens out before the steady strokes of the mower; glorious to strew the damp, green grass upon the ground to catch the morning sun, and grander still to mount upon the load of fragrant hay and be borne triumphant with the gathered harvest of the fields. Who that has passed his early youth on the hill sides of Marsden and Diggle can ever forget the changing raptures of those early days or weary in recalling them when the brain is distraught by the turmoil of the town, and the heart turns sickening from the searing sorrows of thwarted schemes and fallen hopes.