THE OLD BED SANDSTONE.

37

a recent storm had crept into one of tlie deeper fissures, todie in the shelter. I felt a new interest in examining them.The one was a pretty cock goldfinch, with its hood of ver-milion, and its wings inlaid with the gold to which it owesits name, as unsoiled and smooth as if it had been preservedfor a museum. The other, a somewhat rarer bird, of thewoodpecker tribe, was variegated with light blue and a gray-ish yellow. I was engaged in admiring the poor little things,more disposed to be sentimental, perhaps, than if I had beenten years older, and thinking of the contrast between thewarmth and jollity of their green summer haunts, and thecold and darkness of their last retreat, when I heard our em-ployer bidding the workmen lay by their tools. I looked up,and saw the sun sinking behind the thick fir wood beside us,and the long dark shadows of the trees stretching downwardstowards the shore.

This was no very formidable beginning of the course oilife I had so much dreaded. To be sure, my hands were alittle sore, and I felt nearly as much fatigued as if I had beenclimbing among the rocks ; but I had wrought and been use-ful, and had yet enjoyed the day fully as much as usual. Itwas no small matter, too, that the evening, converted, by arare transmutation, into the delicious “ blink of rest” whichBurns so truthfully describes, was all my own. I was aslight of heart next morning as any of my brother-workmen.There had been a smart frost during the night, and the rimelay white on the grass as we passed onwards through thefields ; but the sun rose in a clear atmosphere, and the daymellowed, as it advanced, into one of those delightful daysof early spring which give so pleasing an earnest of what-ever is mild and genial in the better half of the year. Allthe workmen rested at mid-day, and I went to enjoy my half-hour alone on a mossy knoll in the neighbouring wood, whichcommands through the trees a wide prospect of the bay and