avenward in a straight line.'" Such is a specimen of the anecdotes
of this poor woman. I saw her once afterwards, though for only a short
time; when she told me that, though people could not understand _us_,
there was meaning in both her thoughts and in mine; and some years
subsequently, when I was engaged as a journeyman mason in the south of
Scotland, she walked twenty miles to pay my mother a visit, and stayed
with her for several days. Her death was a melancholy one. When fording
the river Conon in one of her wilder moods, she was swept away by the
stream and drowned, and her body cast upon the bank a day or two after.

Our work finished at this place, my master and I returned on a Saturday
evening to Conon-side, where we found twenty-four workmen crowded in a
rusty corn-kiln, open from gable to gable, and not above thirty feet in
length. A row of rude beds, formed of undressed slabs, ran along the
sides; and against one of the gables there blazed a line of fires, with
what are known as masons' setting-irons, stuck into the stonework
behind, for suspending over them the pots used in cooking the food of
the squad. The scene, as we entered, was one of wild confusion. A few of
the soberer workmen were engaged in "baking and firing" oaten cakes, and
a few more occupied, with equal sobriety, in cooking their evening
porridge; but in front of the building there was a wild party of
apprentices, who were riotously endeavouring to prevent a Highland
shepherd from driving his flock past them, by shaking their aprons at
the affrighted animals; and a party equally bent on amusement inside
were joining with burlesque vehemence in a song which one of the men,
justly proud of his musical talents, had just struck up. Suddenly the
song ceased, and with wild uproar a bevy of some eight or ten workmen
burst out into the green in full pursuit of a squat little fellow, who
had, they said, insulted the singer. The cry rose wild and high, "A
ramming! a ramming!" The little fellow was seized and thrown down; and
five men--one holding his head, and one stationed at each arm and
leg--proceeded to execute on his body the stern behests of barrack-law.
He was poised like an ancient battering-ram, and driven endlong against
the wall of the kiln,--that important part of his person coming in
violent contact with the masonry, "where," according to Butler, "a kick
hurts honour" very much. After the third blow, however, he was released,
and the interr