It was Effie, who had once more entered into my world of peregrination and meditation. But the immediate effect was curious. This was the moment to ask how she had fared for the two winter periods, and for the bygone summer; to wish she was very well, and was getting on well; moreover, to inquire whether the people had been kind to her since we last met, and whether she had not been sleeping in the woods too often. Another thing occurred to me afterwards, but not at the time. What would have been her obedient rejoinder this gladsome morning, amid the enrapturing circumstances of a

post-runner. The impulse was imperious | sticks, crosswise; and somewhere about that was driving all animated nature out- the humble apparel appeared the suggesside. It drove me down to a boulder on tion of a shepherd's grey plaid. the edge of the loch,where the sandpiper was darting along, and where I was watching the minnows among the sprouting tangle of the water-lilies. The yellow trout were plopping here and there, wondering, it seemed to my fancy, whether I had a rod with me for a forenoon's daffin. All the mileage of amphitheatre, from east to west, from south to north, had put off the taciturnity of distance, and was quite near together in the dwindled landscape, with its fleecy occupants. The order of the morning was marriage joys, in the thronging mountain burns wooing and winning the exquisite rapacity of Loch Voil. One at my feet was cheerily brawl-new summer day? The apologetic refrain ing, as if nothing were happening in giving up its individuality in quest of a knowledge it will never bring back, and which might prove useless if it were brought back. Mortals and streams are alike in returning never more to where they started; and the experience of the two counts for little until they are lost, and their experience with them. It is well that it is so; for if they came back, it would be as changed material among repudiating strangers, of which would come inconsolable mournfulness for altered days. The going on forever may do for the symbolism of Tennyson's "Brook;" but in the real life of the mountain burn it rather is the going on before, for lochs are the graves of the tributary springs in the mosses, and the water-fountains are never old. It is thus that these capering rills are youngsters hurrying on after what has been, only to become forgotten in their turn. Rightly contemplated, their life, joyous in the main, is as deeply affecting as our own, in that the place that knows them this morning shall to-morrow know them no more forever.

The reverie was interrupted hereabouts by the noise made by the snick of a gate on the road, about forty yards off, in the gentle dulness of the sunlight momentarily eclipsed by the larches. What looked like a girl going to school approached from the west, and she was shutting the gate that keeps the cattle in selected herds, and that made the noise. But she grew bigger as she got nearer; for some states of the atmosphere, especially in Highland perspectives, have a power of their own in magnifying or in diminishing figures. A brown woollen napkin was pinned under her chin; over the shoulder was slung a bundle which included three

of the late September afternoon" Oh, I'm comin' directly, sir, for the nicht's sune gaun tae fa',"-would not suit all this new greenery, these opening buds, the calling of the lambs at play, these songs of birds, this hour's fulness of April's gifts to May-this humming telltale that winter was away. Obviously not. The plaint, if any, would be in another note of the gamut altogether than the September one of 1888. But Effie passed on, and speak to her I did not. It was as if I could not, though why remains inexplicable. Once on Lochleven an old friend astern in the Mary Beaton, with his timehonored hat in the crick of his neck, passed me four yards off. He had been seven years in Bombay, and I then believed he was there. Nevertheless, I was certain he was in that small boat, as a comparison of dates subsequently proved; but total inability to speak as he passed by on Lochleven occasioned this miss to shake hands when thus foregathered after so long a separation. It was not that I doubted Effie's identity; she did not see me, for I was low down on the loch's edge and she was up on the road, our relative positions being reversed from what they were when first we met. She looked neither to right nor to left, as the manner is of people who are self-engrossed. Introspection has no curiosity, and except when startled the strung nerves go straight ahead. The contour view was all I obtained as it wended its way against the perspective of the lichen and the mossclad dyke, and the moments were few before the vision had escaped round the curve of the road. In silence she passed on, a solitary human figure among the multifarious summer renewals; and the opportunity for conversation was gone.

It was as if the weird parade of ghosts in "Macbeth" had rehearsed itself under these greening trees, for in desolate places there are results kindred to these in a human being passing on with never a word exchanged. The effect of this contact, and yet want of contact, was heightened by the flood of recollections of the interview before, a mile up the loch. Too late I fully realized the unfriendly aspect of my sitting fast on the boulder without as much as a good-morning. It was all that, and therefore for the reserve unaccountable upon me I have ever since been unable to offer myself the smallest explanation or apology. Fair Ophelias and wandering Effies seldom or never repeat themselves, so that kind words to them when possible ought neither to be garrulous nor stinted. The affairs of men are awry from golden opportunities unembraced for enterprise or sympathy, and no tide in them is too small on which to launch the argosy of the feeblest help. Let the last note of the incident go round as a lesson of crude procrastination to be avoided. The word unsaid has deepened the lovely shadows of that archway of larches as you go towards the Braes of Balquhidder, even although the rejoinder might have been the briefest, the look the wannest, and the aid the smallest. In memory I still see receding in it the fragile form with its bundle of clothes and sticks slung from the shoulder. The pot, too, in the left hand, I still see there; the machinery, as the stage managers would say, for this dreadful "business" of carrying out the realistic drama of Effie's harmless, aimless life. And, ah! those sticks! No need for the carrying of sticks where Effie wanders; the winter blasts strew plenty in her path for her frequent tripods and wood-fires. Is it possible that the sticks she carries have become pets-"nonesuch" in all the glens? Are they boon companions, and the chosen part of all she cares for? How humbling is this humanizing of the sticks, if it be so; and yet how natural among the manifold crazes of us mortals! It is less saddening to realize that where this child of the "land of the mountain and the flood" meanders along its devious ways there is a charity that is not puffed up, but is mindful; for her continual going about is to be explained on the ground only that the cottars she makes friends of are open-handed. If she be still living, I hope she will find in every festive time something of the spirit of the feast. In those scenes there are ancient observances always, which, like all sound

observances, are celebrated with feasts and fat things, and for all Effie's frugal necessities either of them, when the snow lies prone, may do as well. In this great world, with Africa recently added to it by the various agreements of brilliant diplomatists, anything for Effie will not be much to it; but it may mean all the differ. ence to her. There is no breach in time or space in the sacramental occasions of lending to the Lord by giving to the poor. Who would not give rue or rosemary give, indeed, all the botanies to fair W. HODGSON. Ophelia, to heal her ailing spirit, even in the play?

From Macmillan's Magazine.
BUTTER-MAKING IN JUTLAND.

I ONCE heard it asserted by a military man who had served many years in India, that on his return home there was nothing he enjoyed more in the way of food than English bread and butter. Indian bread was not over good, and Indian butter was abominable; indeed, butter it could scarcely be said to be according to our ideas. Still even in England there is butter and butter-nay further, there is very much more that is bad, or indifferent, than good, and even the good is not uniformly what it ought to be and might be, except in a few favored spots where the most improved methods of dairy work have been introduced. In Denmark they can put us to shame in the art of butter-making. It would be an exaggeration to say that what English butter is to Indian, Danish is to English; but on the whole English butter is very inferior to Danish, and there is certainly no good reason why it need be so.

Not long ago I spent a fortnight at the house of a Danish friend in what he terms the Wild West of the country, in the south-west corner of Jutland to wit, within as it is half an hour's walk of the shore of the North Sea-" the Englishman often called there, especially at flood-time

and not many miles from the German frontier of Slesvig. This seems to be one of the few parts of the Continent that my fellow-countrymen do not much visit; for I was told by some of the inhabitants that I was the only Englishman within living memory that had ever been seen in their village. I had therefore a good opportu nity of learning something of the simple, not to say primitive, country life of the Jutlanders. A country more wholly given

miles submerged by the sea. When the wind blows strongly from the south-west for any length of time at the high tides, then every one is anxiously on the lookout for a flood, and as a first precaution the cattle are all brought home, the homestead being at a considerable distance from the pastures and on somewhat higher ground. One of these floods was in danger of hap

to agriculture it would be impossible to conceive. Almost every householder there is a farmer, the only difference between them being one of degree. Like the patriarchs of old, their property is reckoned not so much by the extent of their land or the amount of their capital as by the num ber of their cattle. Out of a population of some seven or eight hundred in the place where I was, there were only two house-pening during my short stay in the counholders who did not keep cows. Nearly everybody had two at least; and one large farmer, who had his own private Mejeri, or butter-factory, in a distant part of the parish, milked as many as one hundred and sixty-five cows every day. This however was an exceptional case altogether, the holdings being generally small, though by no means uniformly so. The farmers are nearly all freeholders, and the farms are handed down from father to son; not usually, however, as with us, at the death of the father, but at such time as he begins to feel active work too much for his strength. He then retires with his wife, if she be living, to a smaller house in the neighborhood, his son on the farm supply. ing him with everything that is necessary for his maintenance and comfort; thus the old folks end their days in retirement and rest within easy reach of one at least of their children. The other children also may and often do have an interest in the farm; and when the younger sons or daughters marry they receive so much out of the property, either in a lump sum, or as an annual payment equivalent to a fair percentage on whatever their portions may be. These charges are at first no doubt rather a serious burden upon the property; but by degrees, if the eldest son be thrifty and industrious, which is generally the case, they are permanently wiped off, and he is then able to lay by money for himself and family. Naturally this system is much modified by circumstances and family arrangements, so that there are hardly two cases exactly alike; but on the whole the plan seems to work satisfactorily, for there is no real poverty in the country, and the people live happily and contentedly.

The quality of the soil is very variable. A considerable part of the ploughing land is light and sandy, but the Enge, or lowlying meadows nearest the sea (our Yorkshire word Ings), are for the most part good old pasture, but I saw nothing equal to some of our rich English pastures. Again, the Jutland farmer has difficulties to contend with which are unknown in this country. At times these Enge are for

try; for some days it blew almost a gale, but fortunately the wind just kept out of the most dreaded quarter, and no flood ensued. Wheat is not cultivated in west Jutland, the soil being unfavorable for it. Barley and oats do well; rye is extensively grown, and rye bread very commonly used by the people. Wheat is brought from the eastern side of the country, and wheat bread is almost always to be seen on the farmer's table together with rye bread, but the latter is generally preferred. The agricultural implements and appliances are not equal to those usually seen in England, but they are better than might be supposed in a country which has no coal or iron. Although threshing-machines have been introduced, the flail is still largely used. Good iron ploughs and harrows are common, but there is in use a curious, light, single-handled plough drawn by one horse which I had not seen elsewhere. Artificial manures are hardly ever used, that produced in the farmyard being practically the only fertilizer that is put upon the land. The horses are strong, thick-set animals, short in height, and more like those to be seen in Suffolk than anything else. In Denmark, however, by far the most im portant animal is the cow. In appearance they are not specially striking. In size, coloring, and quality they are very similar to the ordinary shorthorn breed such as one sees in the north of England, though they are if anything a little smaller. The people take the greatest possible care of and interest in them, much more than we do in England. They seem to be watched by some one or other constantly. As there are no hedges to separate the fields, the cows and other animals, including the sheep, are all tethered; and this custom itself entails of course pretty constant attention. If the weather be at all cold, one may often see the beasts covered with cloths as they graze. The cows are milked thrice a day, about five in the morning, then between eleven and twelve, and again late in the evening. A register is frequently kept of the amount of milk in pounds given by each cow daily. This is done without difficulty, and adds greatly