ingled in my ears. But
the discovery came too late, and the great man had already succumbed
under the load of his honours and misfortunes.

Presently, after giving us a cigar apiece, Scott bade us farewell and
disappeared with his daughter over the hills. And when I applied to Sim
for information, his answer of "The Shirra, man! A'body kens the
Shirra!" told me, unfortunately, nothing.

A more considerable adventure falls to be related. We were now near the
border. We had travelled for long upon the track beaten and browsed by a
million herds, our predecessors, and had seen no vestige of that traffic
which had created it. It was early in the morning when we at last
perceived, drawing near to the drove-road, but still at a distance of
about half a league, a second caravan, similar to but larger than our
own. The liveliest excitement was at once exhibited by both my comrades.
They climbed hillocks, they studied the approaching drove from under
their hand, they consulted each other with an appearance of alarm that
seemed to me extraordinary. I had learned by this time that their
stand-off manners implied, at least, no active enmity; and I made bold
to ask them what was wrong.

"Bad yins," was Sim's emphatic answer.

All day the dogs were kept unsparingly on the alert, and the drove
pushed forward at a very unusual and seemingly unwelcome speed. All day
Sim and Candlish, with a more than ordinary expenditure both of snuff
and of words, continued to debate the position. It seems that they had
recognised two of our neighbours on the road--one Faa, and another by
the name of Gillies. Whether there was an old feud between them still
unsettled I could never learn; but Sim and Candlish were prepared for
every degree of fraud or violence at their hands. Candlish repeatedly
congratulated himself on having left "the watch at home with the
mistress"; and Sim perpetually brandished his cudgel, and cursed his
ill-fortune that it should be sprung.

"I wilna care a damn to gie the daashed scoon'rel a fair clout wi' it,"
he said. "The daashed thing micht come sindry in ma hand."

"Well, gentlemen," said I, "suppose they do come on, I think we can give
a very good account of them." And I made my piece of holly, Ronald's
gift, the value of which I now appreciated, sing about my head.

"Ay, man? Are ye stench?" inquired Sim, with a gleam of approval in his
wooden countenance.

The same evening, somewhat wearied with our day-long exp