we're a little short in the orchestra. | nature; but you will scarce believe how You're a musician, I guess?" my heart leaped at this. It was like

"You see, sir," added the latter to me, "he bet you were a musician; I bet you weren't. No offence, I hope?"

"None whatever," I said, and the two withdrew to the bar, where I presume the debt was liquidated.

I assured him that, beyond a rudimen- meeting one's wife. I had come home tary acquaintance with "Auld Lang again-home from unsightly deserts, to Syne" and the "Wearing of the Green," the green and habitable corners of the I had no pretension whatever to that earth. Every spire of pine along the style. He seemed much put out of coun- hilltop, every trouty pool along that tenance; and one of his taller compan- mountain river, was more dear to me than ions asked him, on the nail, for five dol- a blood relation. Few people have praised lars. God more happily than I did. And thenceforward, down by Blue Canyon, Alta, Dutch Flat, and all the old mining camps, through a sea of mountain forests, dropping thousands of feet toward the far sea-level as we went, not I only, but all the passengers on board, threw off their sense of dirt and heat and weari ness, and bawled like schoolboys, and thronged with shining eyes upon the platform, and became new creatures within and without. The sun no longer oppressed us with heat, it only shone laughingly along the mountain-side, until we were fain to laugh ourselves for glee. At every turn we could see further into the land and our own happy futures. At every town the cocks were tossing their clear notes into the golden air, and crowing for the new day and the new country. For this was indeed our destination; this was "the good country" we had been going to so long.

This little adventure woke bright hopes in my fellow-travellers, who thought they had now come to a country where situations went a-begging. But I am not so sure that the offer was in good faith. Indeed, I am more than half persuaded it was but a feeler to decide the bet.

Of all the next day I will tell you nothing, for the best of all reasons, that I remember no more than that we continued through desolate and desert scenes, fiery hot and deadly weary. But some time after I had fallen asleep that night, I was awakened by one of my companions. It was in vain that I resisted. A fire of enthusiasm and whiskey burned in his eyes; and he declared we were in a new country, and I must come forth upon the platform and see with my own eyes. The train was then, in its patient way, standing halted in a by-track. It was a clear, moonlit night; but the valley was too narrow to admit the moonshine direct, and only a diffused glimmer whitened the tall rocks and relieved the blackness of the pines. A hoarse clamor filled the air; it was the continuous plunge of a cascade somewhere near at hand among the mountains. The air struck chill, but tasted good and vigorous in the nostrils a fine, dry, old mountain atmosphere. I was dead sleepy, but I returned to roost with a grateful mountain feeling at my heart.

When I awoke next morning, I was puzzled for a while to know if it were day or night, for the illumination was unusual. I sat up at last, and found we were grading slowly downward through a long snowshed; and suddenly we shot into an open; and before we were swallowed into the next length of wooden tunnel, I had one glimpse of a huge, pine-forested ravine upon my left, a foaming river, and a sky already colored with the fires of dawn. I am usually very calm over the displays of

By afternoon we were at Sacramento, the city of gardens in a plain of corn; and the next day before the dawn we were lying to upon the Oakland side of San Francisco Bay. The day was breaking as we crossed the ferry; the fog_was rising over the citied hills of San Francisco; the bay was perfect — not a ripple, scarce a stain, upon its blue expanse; everything was waiting, breathless, for the sun. A spot of cloudy gold lit first upon the head of Tamalpais, and then widened downward on its shapely shoulder; the air seemed to awaken, and began to sparkle; and suddenly

The tall hills Titan discovered, and the city of San Francisco, and the bay of gold and corn, were lit from end to end with summer daylight. R. L. STEVENSON.

From Blackwood's Magazine. MASTER TOMMY'S EXPERIMENT:

A HEATHER-BURNING STORY.

ONE breezy morning in late March, the factor, his grieve, and a couple of keepers

stood on an occupation road, at a gate | not before the thin white grass, to which leading out on to a great stretch of moor- it was applied, caught fire. The grieve land. The heather was black in many thrust a long withered bunch of heather places, or rather there were black spots into the young flame, and in a few seconds and long lanes running through the ran out a line of fire twenty yards long. heather, showing where it had been re- The men ranged themselves up against cently burnt, and the men were discussing it, and with their birch switches beat out the advisability of continuing their work the flame on the windward side, - not aland burning more. The wind was so ways easy work, for it ran through the high, and the ling which came next in undergrowth with wonderful quickness, turn was so dry and parched by it, helped and care, and sometimes a few minutes' by occasional blinks of a March sun, that hard work, was necessary to prevent its the keeper was afraid the fire might get spreading in a wrong direction. In an "the head of them," and burn more than hour, a very long line of fire was estabwould be good for his department; and lished, ever eating up against the breeze, the forester, who arrived shortly after the crackling and sputtering, and reducing to discussion began, concurred in these soft black powder or burnt stalks everyviews. But the grieve, a man of weight, thing that came in its way. Then - when both in opinion and substance, vehe- this line was four or five feet wide — the mently scoffed at the possibility of such heather, fifty yards off, was kindled in a a thing happening. "We've plenty of parallel, and a rush of red flame and gray hands," he said; "the season is getting dense smoke tore over the strip, raging on, and we've still lots to do, and if we and fuming with irresistible fury till it don't do it now, we shan't do it at all this reached the black boundary, where it imyear- that's my opinion. When the head mediately died harmlessly out. The first keeper suggested that even if half the line was ever carried on well in advance moor was burnt, he, the grieve, would not of the second, and before midday a long, be much put out, that official threw the black trail was left behind, carried up hill taunt aside with a grunt, and fixed his and down dale, straight and even, measeyes on the factor, awaiting his decision. ured and kept in check by the careful And the factor, being interested in the eyes of men trained and experienced in keeper's grouse and the grieve's sheep, as such work. The men had brought what well as in the plantation which the for- they called "a dry piece" with them, and ester was always trying to persuade his the factor supplied the moisture which master to make on part of that hillside, they considered necessary for its proper considered the matter fairly and dispas- digestion-whisky. They all had a glass sionately, and thus gave it: "We'll try it, at dinner-time, and about six o'clock were anyhow, and we'll take plenty of men.' preparing for another as a strengthener. Then the grieve blew a joyous whistle, for the last hour's work, when an acputting a forefinger of each hand in his cident happened which made them all mouth, causing to issue thence a shrill change their plans, and prevented many sound, which went far over hill and dale; an honest fellow from eating his porridge and in a short time a goodly array of men at home that night, or sleeping in his own appeared from all parts of the compass bed. from the steading below, and from various bothies and cottages round, some of them finishing their breakfasts as they arrived, and all armed with one or two long switches of birch, called technically "beaters," or "trees." They, too, had been discussing the wind, uncertain as to what would prove the order of the day; but when it came they came also, like good soldiers, keeping their private opinions to themselves, whatever they might be - or at all events, not obtruding them upon their betters.

This small army, twenty or so in number, climbed the hill above them, and soon reached the place where the day's work was to commence. The factor lit a match -the wind had it out in a second, but

That morning Master Tommy, aged ten, son of the laird, went through the programme which he had for some time chalked out for himself as being necessary. He hid himself in the barn, then in a shrubbery, was discovered, admonished, howled, had his ears boxed, and then consented to set out on his daily visit to the kind minister who was teaching him Latin a governess accompany. ing him to the gate of the manse, and watching him safely inside the door. Master Tommy had not advanced far enough into the mysteries of the noble language to become greatly enamored of it; and never had the verb amo seemed more hollow to him, or more meaningless, than on that fine March morning. On the

a box of

a

previous day - a half-holiday-he had, | heartened at this as might have been for the first time, assisted at the annual supposed. Crushed into a shapeless mass ceremony of "muir-burn." A good-na- in one of his hot knickerbocker pockets tured keeper had got him a birchen switch was an emblem of great power suitable to his age and dimensions, and matches, warranted to strike on anything. Tommy, most exceedingly to his edifica- He drew this treasure out, and with a tion, had spent three hours in thrashing shaking hand struck one, and lit a small away at any bit of flame he could reach. isolated tuft of heather. Then with a He got greatly in the way of everybody. larger tuft, which he managed to pull up, Now and then he tumbled into a hag, and he beat out the flame almost before it had had to be pulled out. Two or three times well kindled. There was shelter in this he lost himself in the smoke, and an- hollow, though on the open moor the wind nounced his condition to all whom it might was blowing as freshly as ever, and he concern with wild and mournful howls, had no difficulty in accomplishing this. He was voted a nuisance by every one on So for a long time he amused himself the hill; but this did not lessen his enjoy- mightily, burning tiny patches here and ment in the least, and he was much put there; and as the ground was damp and out when the last flames were extin- the heather poor and thin, he easily put guished, and he was told the fun was over out his conflagrations. Tommy was for the day. Then he went home; and a sharp and clever boy, and he had sense more grimy, smoky urchin never entered enough to know that a big flame would be his father's house. His clothes were torn the means of bringing people down to see and his face black, and he carried with what was the matter and inquire as to the him into the drawing-room an atmosphere kindler, and he did not want to betray which caused him to be promptly ejected, himself and curtail his delightful amusea housemaid being sent in chase, with ment. But the spirit of mischief was orders to severely wash him. When the abroad on those moors that March afterprocess had been carried out not with- noon whether in the shape of old Kathout much kicking- and the soap was erine Buchanan the witch, as some said well from his eyes, he informed her that afterwards, or merely as an impalpable burning heather was the grandest sport essence, as is most likely, matters little in which he had ever engaged, and that and this spirit led Tommy step by step for his part, when he became a man, he from the safe and thinly covered marshy intended to do little else. But the next hollow towards the skirt of a long plantamorning, as we have related, his mancu- tion. This plantation had been in some vres to avoid lessons were detected and respects a failure. The ground was cold, checkmated, and strict orders were given and the larch and firs had made but small that he was to return to the house imme- progress, rather inclining to bush out in diately the minister let him go, and that width than exert themselves to stand up on no account was he to think of going on as forest trees. After the forester and the hill again. Tommy, without any in his men had several times "beat up tention of keeping it, gave his word, as the wood, making good the gaps among being the easiest way of preventing a the plants, the owner got tired of their messenger being sent to conduct him want of success. The fences were "let" home at night. But he was so inatten- down, and sheep and cattle could get tive and so troublesome to his tutor, that in if they wanted. But there was little that gentleman, after a long lecture on his there to tempt them: the long, rank bad behavior and evil ways, was glad to heather, and the still longer sour white let him go at four o'clock - -a full hour grass, would have been despised by any before his time. Tommy carefully recon-old blackface who stood on this side of noitred the road near the manse, to see if any one was lying in wait to take him home, and then, climbing the dyke, set off with a beating heart, as fast as his small legs would let him, to the nearest hilltop, from which he expected to be able to see signs of the whereabouts of the workmen. His sagacity was rewarded. He saw a long line of fire slowly burning up against the wind, but at a great distance: he could not make out the figures of the men attending it. Tommy, however, was not so dis

starvation. This badly developed wood was about eight hundred yards long, and lay broadside on to a vast extent of moorland, terminated by older woods, and the latter stretched away in stately pride for miles and miles. The heather on the far side of the young wood at which Tommy had arrived was exceedingly dense and high. The authorities had meditated planting this also, but the fail ure in what had already been done made them delay the work, and meanwhile it

had not been burnt or interfered with, but | top of the brae the fire got help from the

left that it might be a shelter to the young trees, if ever they were put in young wood does not do well on burnt ground.

wind roughly blowing where there was no shelter, and it then went roaring and hissing through the plantation, driving out all its small tenants - the rabbits and hares and proclaiming in a most unmistakable way to all within a wide radius that it had started off at last to do its work, and that it meant to do it thoroughly.

So, about six o'clock, the men legitimately burning, a mile and a half or so away from the scene of Master Tommy's little experiment, were thinking of their suppers, and impatiently watching the indefatigable grieve, who still kept running out his safety-lines and calling on them to stand by him lest the boundaries should be passed. Old Mungo M Naughton had been sent a little way back to bring on the basket which held the whisky and the glasses. Mungo pulled out the cork of one bottle and

If we have made the surroundings of this place clear to the reader, we have shown that a mischievous boy possessed of that most dangerous commodity, a little learning, and a box of matches to boot, could not well have been deposited in a locality where he could do more harm. Tommy eyed the long, rank heather on the tumbled-down bank of the plantation, and a noble ambition shot into his mind. "I'll light it below," he thought, "and then run up the bank and put it out before it gets on. It'll burn splendidly!" This boy, after his late experiences, considered himself capable of coping with a very formidable conflagration. He had been timid in the hollow, where there was no need for fear, and now he was about to be fearfully rash where there was the great-tasted it, to see if any of the idle loons est cause for alarm. "Be not too bold." Tommy had never read Spenser, and would have appreciated him as much as the Latin grammar. He struck one of his last matches, applied it to an inviting tussock of dry grass, and sprang up the bank, armed with his little heather switch. He did not stay there long, how ever, neither had he occasion to use any more of the treasures in his box. In two or three seconds Tommy jumped off this bank, dropped his switch, and ran off as fast as his legs would carry him; and the wish that predominated then in his small breast was that he had never been born.

The fire ran quickly up the sloping bank; then for a moment or two it seemed baffled, and a man with strong arms and a knowledge of using them, could have got the mastery. But it slowly worked its way across the thin herbage on the turf dyke, and got inside the wood: a long, venomous, yellow flame shot out ahead, and touched a tuft of grass; ready fuel lay on every side, and the plantation was fairly alight in a few seconds. The fire spread out and took to itself ample ground. It ran furiously in a long red and yellow wall up the little brae where the trees first began, encouraged and fanned by the motion in the air its own blaze made, shrivelling up the stunted Scotch firs and spruce which had so long striven to make their livelihood out of the inhospitable soil, and had now to see and feel a moment's blaze and pain ruin the work of years. As it neared the

66

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had been playing a trick on honest men
by exchanging peat water for good liquor;
and while he was slowly tilting the bot-
tle's base up against the dying sun, he
became aware of something which alarmed
him so much that he swallowed more in
one gulp than he could manage, and
nearly choked, and for a moment he could
not call out. By the time the whisky had
found out its way. some through his
waistcoat, but the bulk down his shriv-
elled old throat- - the other men had seen
the blaze, and he lost forever the credit
and honor of having been the first to call
attention to it. "What's that, forester?"
By
what's that?" "The young
wood's on fire!" Away with you; run,
men, run; get to it for God's sake, or
we'll never manage that!" The factor
called the oldest and steadiest boy to
him: "Run for your life, lad, to the farm,
and alarm everybody. Shout at all the
bothies, and send up every living soul to
the hill." The lad set off like a young
deer, grieving to leave temporarily the
scene of so much excitement, and yet
proud of his task, and at being the first
bearer of ill news. Two active men were
detailed to cut fresh beaters in a neigh-
boring wood, and then the factor set off
after his rapidly lessening men
as hard
as he could stretch, with that peculiar
sinking about the knees and thumping of
the heart which people feel when sud-
denly called on for exciting work which
entails great physical labor. Wonderful
stories were told afterwards as to the time
taken by some active souls to cover that

mile and a half. Robert M'Corquodael | side to put out the flaming bits of grass claimed to have been the first at the fire; which were now and then blown over into but as he was reported to have slunk away the heather. These latter had plenty of half an hour previously, hoping not to be work to do. The light bent few like missed, and his house lay in the direction small comets from the plantation; and of the manse, he did not ultimately get as the herbage being very dry, it took many much credit for his nimbleness as he quickly repeated blows of the beaters to thought due. However, in no long time put out even a tiny flame, so rapidly did every one was up, different emotions agi- the fire run along the ground. Swish tating different bosoms, some of the would come a huge besom, driven with a youngsters merely excited at the prospect will by a great, strong fellow into a flamof seing enormous damage caused; the ing tuft, and the blaze would seemingly older men understanding well the long go out; but even whilst he was raising and serious work which lay before them. his beater for another stroke, it would The grieve and keepers were horrified at start up again, defying him, and the the sight, and the head forester almost quickly applied strokes of two or three out of his mind at the prospect of such men might be wanted to keep it in check. ruin to his department. The factor and some of the men stood at the end of the wood, inactive then, for the fire had not yet reached the boundary, but bracing themselves up as it were for work which they knew a few minutes would bring them. And then one man there compared small things with great, and remembered the description which Napier gives of how, in one of the great battles of the Peninsula, a lull came over the fight, and for a few moments after the explosion of a magazine the men of both armies, stood idle on the bare Spanish hillside-idle for a moment, to get on with their work more fiercely after the short pause.

The sight was an appalling one: the fire was sweeping up the whole breadth of the plantation, and not all the men in Scotland and all the fire-engines in London would have availed anything there. The wind drove it furiously on; great flames shot out on all sides-twisted, yellow, scorching flames licking up with thirsty tongues everything that came in their way, shooting out with extraordinary rapidity twenty feet in advance, and seizing on everything they touched. Green or dry it made little difference, and the spreading spruce and silver firs, which would have burned but languidly on a bonfire, changed in a moment their sappy luxuriance for a shrivelled mass of brown desolation. No one there, however little used to such a sight, but knew that to attempt to cope with the fire then was as useless as to start to bail Loch Awe with a stable-bucket. The god would work his way in that wood at any rate, let who will say him nay. The men were as bold and hardy and daring as Scotch hillmen could be, but even they could do nothing against the mass of red edging from which flames shot out many feet, and fiercely licked round the forms of any standing within measurable distance of their possessions. The grieve pluckily tried it, darting in at a weak place and giving one mighty stroke with his beater. The grieve went in, -a man clad in a hairy and woolly suit of homespun, a good curly beard and moustache adorning his cheerful face, and he came out a singed and scorched creature, hardly recognized by his wife the next day, every hair on his knickerbockers and coat and stockings gone, and most of those on his face sadly curtailed.

The factor put most of his men in front of the wood, a few being left on either

The sight of the great irregular wall of advancing flame was a very grand one, and it seemed grander to an onlooker a little removed from the smoke and splutter and minor noises which it created. Like Job's war-horse, it devoured the ground-all that stood upon the ground; a man did not need a poetical imagination to compare it with an army. Like an army it had its advanced guards — the long, lurching flames which pioneered the way. The tufts of burning grass, which fell thickly on the sides, might be likened to spies sent out to see the lie of the land. And like an irresistible army it pressed on, the bravest troops on earth would have to retreat before such a foe.

When the men first came round to the head of the wood, they set to work to lay a snare for the enemy they could not fairly meet, and they began to burn a line some hundred yards ahead of the last fence, so that he might exhaust his fury on bare ground. But the heather was so dense and rank and dry, and the breadth to be covered so great, that the factor stopped them. He was afraid of the new fire occupying their attention when they ought to be grappling with the old.