Three generations

IN THE WILDS 109
the house. The first time he came home after her
death he made the whistle mechanically, and, no happy-
child appearing, he stood a minute — poor father ! — with
drooping head, and the whip hanging from his hand,
till he recovered himself and passed indoors.
What were views, panelled rooms, or even ghosts
to the heads of a middle-class family, granted their
intelligence and taste, who had to leave a centre of
civilization and retire into the wilds? For Grange
colliery and mansion-house were alike in the wilds.
The neighbouring villages were almost entirely
tenanted by fishermen, by my father's colliers, or by
hand-loom weavers, masons, and carters, or, at the
best, by retired sea-captains. Elie, the largest village,
at half a mile's distance, had some middle-class houses
with middle-class occupants ; but even these were very
different from the residents in the county town, and,
like the neighbouring farmers, were primitive and
unsympathetic in their habits. The farmhouses were
hardly any of them within a mile's distance ; they
were mostly two or three miles off. The district,
still without passing steamboats and coaches, was
remote and inaccessible. The natives in the middle
rank were old-fashioned, uncultivated country folk,
not infrequently well-to-do in their circumstances,
but slow in the extreme to make the smallest advance
in their opinions and customs. Cupar, with its excep-
tional advantages of trained intelligence and culture,
was very different in every respect.
The spell which Cupar had cast over my father in
early life might have lost something by long familiarity;
but the place and the people were always dear to him,
and the wrench was severe which ultimately trans-
ported him into the depths of the country. The trans-