As the boys left her, Robert contented himself with the single hint: 'Betty, Bodyfauld 's i' the perris o' Kettledrum.

Min' ye that.' Betty glowered and said nothing.
But the delight of the walk of three miles over hill and dale and moor and farm to Mr.Lammie's! The boys, if not as wild as colts--that is, as wild as most boys would have been--were only the more deeply excited.
That first summer walk, with a goal before them, in all the freshness of the perfecting year, was something which to remember in after days was to Falconer nothing short of ecstasy.

The westering sun threw long shadows before them as they trudged away eastward, lightly laden with the books needful for the morrow's lessons.

Once beyond the immediate purlieus of the town and the various plots of land occupied by its inhabitants, they crossed a small river, and entered upon a region of little hills, some covered to the top with trees, chiefly larch, others cultivated, and some bearing only heather, now nursing in secret its purple flame for the outburst of the autumn.

The road wound between, now swampy and worn into deep ruts, now sandy and broken with large stones.
Down to its edge would come the dwarfed oak, or the mountain ash, or the silver birch, single and small, but lovely and fresh; and now green fields, fenced with walls of earth as green as themselves, or of stones overgrown with moss, would stretch away on both sides, sprinkled with busily-feeding cattle.