126 "DIGNITY AND IMPUDENCE."
fields, with their yellowing corn or rich pasture, on which
sturdy bullocks or skittish colts were having a pleasant time.
I could have dived with good-will into these tree-girdled
quarries, and roamed along these high roads, ample enough
for two coaches-and-six to drive abreast, and bordered with
bands of yellow lady's bedstraw and azure veronica, and later
in the season by miniature forests of nodding harebells; or
down these rough by-roads, with their patches of yellow
broom and trailing garlands of brambles, to the outlying
heather on the verge of the moor, about which great humble
bees were always humming. My heart would have hankered,
like theirs, for that grand, gaunt old moor of Mendrummond
-or, as it is called in local parlance, Munrummon"-with
its pale liverwort and white grass of Parnassus, its bronze
stemmed firs and stunted oaks, its lone green glades. One
can still feel that here, as among the mountains of old
Scotland, there linger vestiges of a virgin world.
 As a human being and not a dog, I am not at all clear that
I should have returned so faithfully to cutting reproaches and
a good beating as Wallace and Dick had the courage to do.
 The dogs used to display judiciousness in selecting the
cover of night for their reappearance, and they sometimes
brought home a mutilated hare or rabbit, as if it were intended
for a propitiation. But Wallace at least reported himself, in
full view of the result, with manly straightforwardness and
resignation. He was accustomed to go beneath his master's
window, and by a deep prolonged "bow-f-f" announce that
there he was ready to submit to whatever his master imposed
upon him.
 I regret to own that Dick, on the contrary, stole round the