tness of his feet has felt that
fatal frost--the wild heart is hushed, Hamish--tame, tame, tame; and
there the Monarch of the Mountains--the King of the Cliffs--the Grand
Llama of the Glens--the Sultan of the Solitudes--the Dey of the
Deserts--the Royal Ranger of the Woods and Forests--yea, the very Prince
of the Air and Thane of Thunder--"shorn of all his beams," lies
motionless as a dead Jackass by the wayside, whose hide was not thought
worth the trouble of flaying by his owners the gypsies! "To this
complexion has he come at last"--he who at dawn had borrowed the wings
of the wind to carry him across the cataracts!

A sudden pang shoots across our heart. What right had we to commit this
murder? How, henceforth, shall we dare to hold up our head among the
lovers of liberty, after having thus stolen basely from behind on him,
the boldest, brightest, and most beautiful of all her sons! We, who for
so many years have been just able to hobble, and no more, by aid of the
Crutch--who feared to let the heather-bent touch our toe, so sensitive
in its gout--We, the old and impotent, all last winter bed-ridden, and
even now seated like a lameter on a shelty, strapped by a patent buckle
to a saddle provided with a pummel behind as well as before--such an
unwieldy and weary wretch as We--"fat, and scant of breath"--and with
our hand almost perpetually pressed against our left side, when a
coughing-fit of asthma brings back the stitch, seldom an absentee--to
assassinate THAT RED-DEER, whose flight on earth could accompany the
eagles in heaven; and not only to assassinate him, but, in a moral vein,
to liken his carcass to that of a Jackass! It will not bear further
reflection; so, Hamish, out with your whinger, and carve him a dish fit
for the gods--in a style worthy of Sir Tristrem, Gill Morice, Robin
Hood, or Lord Ranald. No; let him lie till nightfall, when we shall be
returning from Inveraw with strength sufficient to bear him to the Tent.

But hark, Hamish, to that sullen croak from the cliff! The old raven of
the cove already scents death--

"Sagacious of his quarry from afar!"

But where art thou, Hamish? Ay, yonder is Hamish, wriggling on his very
belly, like an adder, through the heather to windward of the croaker,
whose nostrils, and eyes, and bill, are now all hungrily fascinated, and
as it were already fastened into the very bowels of the beast. His days
are numbered. That sly serpent, by circuitous windings ins