and a pipe a yard long in his mouth. His _tout ensemble_, in short, was
exceeding strange in Johnny Armstrong's eyes. Nevertheless, he accosted
him.

"Can ye tell me, freen, how far I may be frae Brechin?" he inquired.

The stranger shook his head, but made no reply.

"I'm sayin', freen," repeated Johnny, in a louder tone, thinking that
his friend, as he called him, might possibly be dull of hearing, "can ye
tell me if I'm onything near Brechin?"

The stranger again shook his head, but still said nothing. Johnny was
confounded. At length, however, after puffing away for some seconds with
a suddenly-increased energy, he slowly withdrew his pipe from his mouth,
and delivered himself of what sounded to Johnny's ears very much like
this, spoken with great rapidity.

"Futra butara rap a ruara dutera muttera purra murra footra den,
Preekin, humph."

Of this Johnny of course could make nothing, no more than the reader
can, further than recognising in the word "Preekin" a resemblance to the
name of the town he so anxiously inquired after; and he was sorely
perplexed thereat. Neither could he at all comprehend what sort of a
being he had fallen in with.

"I dinna understan' a word o' what ye say, freen," at length said
Johnny, staring hard at the stranger with open mouth.

"Umph!" said the latter; and he again withdrew his pipe from his mouth,
and again sent a volley of his "dutera mutteras" about Johnny's ears,
to precisely the same purpose as before.

Finding that it was of no use making any further attempt at
conversation, Johnny passed on, not doubting that he had met either with
a _dummy_ or a madman. But what was Johnny's amazement when, shortly
afterwards, meeting a woman, whose dress, in its own way, was equally
odd and strange with that of the person he had just left, he was
answered (that is, to his queries again about Brechin), in the same
gibberish in which the former had responded to him.

"What can be the meanin' o' this?" said Johnny to himself, in great
perplexity of mind, as he jogged on, after leaving the lady in the same
unsatisfactory way as he had left the gentleman. "Whar in a' the earth
can I hae gotten to, that naebody I meet wi' can understan' a word o'
plain English, or can speak themsels onything like an intelligible
language?"

He now began to think that he had probably got into the Highlands; but,
although this supposition might account for the strangeness of the
language he had heard,