fore, of a lady of high birth, over whom, in early youth, there had
settled a sad cloud of infamy. She had borne a child to one of the
menials of her father's house, which, with the assistance of her
paramour, she had murdered; and being too high for the law to reach in
these northern parts, at a time when the hereditary jurisdiction still
existed entire, and her father was the sole magistrate, possessed of the
power of life and death in the district, she was sent by her family to
wear out life in this lonely retreat, in which she remained secluded
from the world for more than half a century. And then, long after the
abolition of the local jurisdictions, and when her father and brother,
with the entire generation that knew of her crime, had passed away, she
was permitted to take up her abode in one of the seaport towns of the
north, where she was still remembered at this time as a crazy old lady,
invariably silent and sullen, that used to be seen in the twilight
flitting about the more retired lanes and closes, like an unhappy ghost.
The story, as told me in that solitary valley, just as the sun was
sinking over the hill beyond, powerfully impressed my fancy. Crabbe
would have delighted to tell it; and I now relate it, as it lies fast
wedged in my memory, mainly for the peculiar light which it casts on the
times of the hereditary jurisdictions. It forms an example of one of the
judicial banishments of an age that used, in ordinary cases, to save
itself all sorts of trouble of the kind, by hanging its victims. I may
add, that I saw a good deal of the neighbourhood at this time in the
company of my cousin, and gleaned, from my visits to shieling and
cottage, most of my conceptions of the state of the Northern Highlands,
ere the clearance system had depopulated the interior of the country,
and precipitated its poverty-stricken population upon the coasts.

There was, however, one of my excursions with Cousin William, that
turned out rather unfortunately. The river Shin has its bold
salmon-leap, which even yet, after several hundred pounds' worth of
gunpowder have been expended in sloping its angle of ascent, to
facilitate the passage of the fish, is a fine picturesque object, but
which at this time, when it presented all its original abruptness, was a
finer object still. Though distant about three miles from my uncle's
cottage, we could distinctly hear its roarings from beside his door,
when October nights were frosty and st