We all had breakfast with the Craig Girvan, and greatly enjoyed his fried Guillemots' eggs, bread and butter, and large cups of tea, mollified by liberal quantities of rich goat's milk.

We ascended the great crag under the guidance of the brother who lives upon it. He seemed very doubtful about my ability to visit the ledges whereon the Gannets breed, but when I convinced him of my determination to do what he or anybody else did, he led the way upwards, and, by way of making me feel the hazardousness of the undertaking, he pointed out one place where he had himself sustained a fall that had, according to his own account, broken well nigh the majority of the bones within his body, and another where a nephew of his had been killed outright. v2

After we bad taken a number of pliotograpbs on tbe very brink of an awful cliff, Avliilst poor old Girvan sat on tbe steep hillside above, and swore by all the saints in the calendar be would never get us off the Craig alive, we descended to the landing place again, much to the good-natured old man's delight. When we got down to the safet}^ of a fairly wide goats' track he became quite jolly, and turning to my brother with a great air of mock sincerity, he said: "Mr. Keeaarton, I have a verry perteekilar request to make."

"What's that?" my brother inquired.

"If you take my photograph, for goodness sake dinna promise to send me one; then it may come. I have had scores of amateur photographers on the Craigs, including many meenisters, and most of them have taken my likeness and promised to send me a copy, but never a one has reached me." for home, We had not much time to catch the train and I urged the Girvan Girvan to put on all steam. This the obliging man did mitil his little craft shook and trembled from stem to stern like a thing stricken with palsy under the vibration of her macliinery, some of which became so over-heated with friction that it was necessary to keep it cool bv allowing bucketfuls of sea water to trickle over it from a hole puiu-luHl in the l)ottom of a large zinc i)ail. For purposes of comnmnication with one another these two l)rotliers keep a number of homing pigeons. Some time ago the one living on the Craig had a child taken seriously ill, and sent a message for a doctor, whom his brother promptly took across in the little steam launch which conveyed us over. Tbe doctor found the child very

LANDLORD OF THE HIGHEST INN IN ENGLAND.

THE HIGHEST INN IN ENGLAND.

mueli in need of medicine, but the wind and sea were rising- to such an alarming- extent, in addition to the fact that night was coming on, that there was no hope of sending any over that day. The little sufferer's father was, however, equal to the emergency, and suggested that one of his homing-pigeons should be taken from the loft and the medicine made up in the form of a powder attached to its tail. This was done, and in a little while the anxious parents had the satisfaction of seeing the faithful bird drop from the clouds with the much-needed physic, which, it is pleasant to relate, saved their child's life.

We have met many people who entertained very curious notions in regard to the jjossibilities of the camera. My brother one day photographed a man who had done us some triiling service, and when he sent him the picture, it elicited the information that his wife liked it very much indeed, and had authorised him to say that she would be happy to pay a moderate i)rice for three more prints, provided my brother would turn down the too much upturned trousers legs of her spouse.

During our travels we have generally met with considerable difficulty in obtaining anything like up-to-date intelligence of the bird-life of a locality.

The following verbatim report of a conversation which took place between myself and a farm lad I met one day in a Hertfordshire lane illustrates in an admirable manner the want of definite notions in the rural mind about such impoi'tant things as time and space. "Have you heard an}- liooting owls al)out here, young man? " "Oh yes!" "Whei-e?"

" Just over in that there wood," pointmg to a little copse not far away. ''Lately?" ! " " Oh yes "Well, how lately?" "Oh, a matter o' two year ago."

Whilst searching for materials on the hills dividino- Yorkshire from Westmorland in the neighbourhood of Shunnerfell and Nine Standards we had occasion to stay for a little time at Tan Hill, the highest inn in England and the highest inhabited house in Yorkshire. It enjoys an elevation of 1,727 feet above sea-level and a corresponding degree of isolation. Some idea may be gathered of the distance it lies from " the busy haunts of man" when it is stated that during the sununer months an eighteen-gallon cask of ale lasts a whole month, and in winter three. In fact, eleven consecutive weeks have sometimes passed without as much as the shadow of a stranger crossing the threshold. The landlord, in si)itc of being an old man of between seventy and eighty years of age, all spent immured amongst the gloomy solitude of the lonely liills, was as merry as a schoolboy, and laughed at his own jokes until the tears ran down his wrinkled cheeks. Although the Education Acts, the popular printing press, and the iron road have filled the remotest parts of our land with a hazy and belated knowledge of the wag of the world, it is surprising how utterly, and to me picturesquely, outside the pale of modern thought and feeling some of the sturdy old hillsmen of our country still remain. This old fellow went to Barnard Castle to see a solicitor about his licence, and couldn't tell the time upon

the town clock because "its hands i)()intcd to one tiling and it kept on striking- and striking another ; and he saluted a girlevery quarter of an 'oor " who was washing the solicitor's office steps down with "Is thy faather in?" He told us that he had once been sunnnoned by the parish in which he lived to appear at York as a witness in a trial against a farmer for over-stocking the moor with sheep. AYhen the witnesses were about to enter the "justice room," one of them, on catching sight of the judge and advocates in their wigs and gowns, ran back to him in alarm and exclaimed "Ay, Poonder, I niver saw such a

!lot of grey-headed old men all together in my life They must be older than Methuselah I "

During our stay an old fanner dropped in and ordered himself a glass of ale. In the course of conversation it fell out that he had been to London three times, and stayed for several days upon each occasion. I asked him how he liked the Metropolis. "Fine! " said he: "London's a grand spot to spend a holiday at, but I always took good care niver to be oot after dark." In the summer of 1896 a pair of Barn Swallows made their nest and reared a l)rood of young in a fowl-house at the back of Tan Hill Inn, and the landlord told me he used to leave the door open every night for their convenience. I examined the old nest with a ladder, and calculated that, as the l)uilding was one of two floors, and it was nearly in the highest })art of the roof, it must have been not less than 1,750 feet above the sea-level.

Last Whitsuntide my brother and I found ourselves in a remote Essex village, and, as we were* unable to obtain any sort of inn accommodation, we stayed with a gamekeeper in his tiny, old-fashioned

ESSEX GAMEKEEPER.

cottag-e. He was in many respects one of the most curious men with whom we have come in contact. Well -versed in everything pertaining to field-craft, slow and deliberate, but of the most set purjjose and dogged determination, strong as an ox, and courageous as a lion, but withal tender-hearted to a degree. When quite a small boy he was apprenticed to a gamekeeper who, though a strict disciplinarian where others were concerned, was totally unable to hold himself under control. He used to set his apprentice to mind young pheasants in the morning and, leaving him for the seductive conviviality of a neighbouring public-house, say—"If I'm not back by the time the so-and-so train passes this morning, you'll know I'm the birds." done for for the day, but don't you leave It was often one and two o'clock the following morning before the deljauchee turned up again, and found his youthful apprentice crying, but resolutely sticking to his post, in spite of wind and rain and the terrible loneliness of his vigil-keeping.

Although, comparatively speaking, still only a young man, our iriend's experiences throw a lurid light upon the dangers of his vocation. He has had his comrade shot dead beside him by a poacher in cold blood, has been deliberately shot Inmself by a meml^er of the same fraternity, threatened with murder any nund^er of times, and once or twice been thoroughly peppered with shot by accident. visited the Fame Islands, We have several times and upon each occasion have receivcMl the most courteous and kindly attention from ll()l)ert Darling and his fellow-watcliers, the brotliers Patterson, who

• are employed by an association for the })i'(^tecti()n of the sea-birds breeding on this famous grouj) of

GRACE DARLINGS NEPHEW, ROBERT.

islands. Eobert Darling is a nephew of the famous Grace, whose Bible he possesses, and is the only member of the family now connected in any capacity with the Fames. We stayed three days and three nights with him last summer in the ruins of St. Cuthbert's Tower, sleeping in hammocks suspended from our climbing ropes, which were stretched across a haunted room. I had the good fortune to be aroused by the tapping of a ghost the first night, and promptly turned out to investigate, but found nothing for my brother's camera and magnesium ribbon except a huge piece of old oak panelling, from which, I had no doubt, the sounds, though surprisingly loud, proceeded through some atmospheric change; so turned in again without disturbing him.

The lighthouse men keep a large number of tame rabbits, which wander all over the little island and interbreed with the wild ones. Whilst creeping up to get a nearer view of some bird, I was on several occasions startled by a black, white, or fawn-coloured bunny darting from the shelter of a boulder of rock or tuft of grass close beside me, and scampering away at the top of its speed either to the ruins of St. Cuthbert's Tower or to the Lighthouse itself. The keepers had taught one or two of them to run after pebbles, just like dogs.

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