er the hills, till I came in sight of the
Shaw's-water,--the stream of which I followed for more than a mile with
a beating heart; for the valley through which it flows is bare and open,
and had any of the persecutors been then on the neighbouring hills, I
must have soon been seen; but gradually my thoughts became more
composed, and the terrors of the poor hunted creature again became
changed into confidence and hope.

In this renewed spirit I slackened my pace, and seeing, at a short
distance down the stream, before me a tree laid across a bridge, I was
comforted with the persuasion that some farm-town could not be far off,
so I resolved to linger about till the gloaming, and then to follow the
path which led over the bridge. For, not knowing how the inhabitants in
those parts stood inclined in their consciences, I was doubtful to trust
myself in their power until I had made some espionage. Accordingly, as
the sun was still above the hills, I kept the hollowest track by the
river's brink, and went down its course for some little time, till I
arrived where the hills come forward into the valley; then I climbed up
a steep hazel bank, and sat down to rest myself on an open green plot on
the brow, where a gentle west wind shook the boughs around me, as if the
silent spirits of the solitude were slowly passing by.

In this place I had not been long when I heard, as if it were not far
off, a sullen roar of falling waters rising hoarsely with the breeze,
and listening again another sound came solemnly mingled with it, which I
had soon the delight to discover was the holy harmony of worship, and to
my ears it was as the first sound of the rushing water which Moses
brought from the rock to those of the thirsty Israelites, and I was for
some time so ravished with joy that I could not move from the spot where
I was sitting.

At last the sweet melody of the psalm died away, and I arose and went
towards the airt from which it had come; but as I advanced, the noise of
the roaring waters grew louder and deeper, till they were as the
breaking of the summer waves along the Ardrossan shore, and presently I
found myself on the brink of a cliff, over which the river tumbled into
a rugged chasm, where the rocks were skirted with leafless brambles and
hazel, and garmented with ivy.

On a green sloping bank, at a short distance below the waterfall,
screened by the rocks and trees on the one side, and by the rising
ground on the other, ab