orced me forward. I felt the spray splash over my head: I was nearly
blind and deaf. I made a desperate effort with the last strength which I
had left, and threw myself gasping on the bank.

Dreadnought sprang forward, jumped over and over me, whined, and kissed
my face and hands, and tried to turn me over with his snout, and
scratched and pawed me to make me speak; but I could not yet, and
gasped, and choked, and felt as if my heart would burst. I lay, dripping
and panting, with my arms stretched out on the grass, unable to move,
except with the convulsive efforts of my breath. At last I sat up, but I
could scarcely see: a thin gauzy cloud was over my eyes, a heavy
pressure rung in my ears, my feet still hung in the water, which was now
sweeping a wide white torrent from bank to bank, and running with a
fierce current through both the pools below. The back-water, where my
bonnet had danced, no longer remained; all was carried clear out in one
long rush down to the Cluag. 'Benedictum sit nomen Domini!' I thought,
as I crossed myself. I stretched out my hand, and plucked the nearest
flowers, and smelled their sweet greenwood scent with inexpressible
delight. I never thought that flowers looked so beautiful, or had half
so much perfume, though they were only the pale wild blossoms of the
fading year. I placed them in my breast, and have them still, and never
look upon them without repeating--

'DE PROFUNDIS CLAMAVI AD TE, DOMINE!'

[Illustration: THE FINDHORN.]

Such were the hazards on the fords of the Findhorn; but even by boat the
struggle was sometimes no less arduous, though it enabled us to cross
the water at a height otherwise impassable, of which the following
passage is an example:--

One evening I was returning with the piper, and the old hound which had
accompanied me at the ford. As we descended towards the pool of Cluag,
where I had left the coble quietly moored in the morning, Dreadnought
frequently turned and looked at me with hanging ears and a heavy
cheerless eye; and when we came to the path which led down to the river
he stopped, and dropped behind, and followed at my heel, though usually
he trotted on before, and instead of waiting for the boat, took the
water, which he preferred to the coble. When we came out from the trees
upon the steep bank above the river, I understood his altered manner.
From rock to rock the stream was running a white, furious, rushing
torrent, and the little boat