Flow Willie made a Bird of Agnes. 179

In this, his first summer at home from college,
he also fitted up a small forge—in a part of the
ruins where there was a wide chimney, whose vent
ran up along way unbroken: Here he constructed
a pair of great bellows, and set up an old anvil,
which he bought for a trifle from Mr Willett; and
here his father actually trusted him to shoe his
horses; nor did he ever find a nail of Willie’s
driving require to be drawn before the shoe had to
give place to a new one.

In the afternoon, he always read history, or tales,
ot poetry ; and in the evening did whatever he felt
inclined to do—which brings me to what occupied
him the last hours of the daylight, for a good part
of this first summer,

One lovely evening in June, he came upon Agnes,
who was now eight years old, lying under the
largest elm of aclump of great elms and Scotch
firs at the bottom of the garden. They were the
highest trees in all the neighbourhood, and his
father was very fond of them, To look up into
those elms in the summer time your. eyes seemed
to lose their way in a mist of leaves; whereas the
firs had only great, bony, bare, gaunt arms, with a
tuft of bristles here and there. But when a ray of
the setting sun alighted upon one of these firs it
shone like a flamingo. It seemed as if the surly
old tree and the gracious sunset had some secret
between them, which, as oftenas they met, broke ©
out in ruddy flame.