t my shepherd, but
another, who once came with his wife to the village, after a twelve
miles' walk across the hills, to ask "what the day of the week was?" They
had lost count, and the man had attended to his work on a day which the
dame averred to be the Sabbath. He denied that it _was_ the Sabbath, and
I believe that it turned out to be a Tuesday. This little incident gives
some idea of the delightful absence of population in Glen Aline. But no
words can paint the utter loneliness, which could actually be felt--the
empty moors, the empty sky. The heaps of stones by a burnside, here and
there, showed that a cottage had once existed where now was no
habitation. One such spot was rather to be shunned by the superstitious,
for here, about 1698, a cottar family had been evicted by endless
unaccountable disturbances in the house. Stones were thrown by invisible
hands--though occasionally, by the way, a white hand, with no apparent
body attached to it, _was_ viewed by the curious who came to the spot.
Heavy objects of all sorts floated in the air; rappings and voices were
heard; the end wall was pulled down by an unknown agency. The story is
extant in a pious old pamphlet called "Sadducees Defeated," and a great
deal more to the same effect--a masterpiece by the parish minister,
signed and attested by the other ministers of the Glen Kens. The
Edinburgh edition of the pamphlet is rare; the London edition may be
procured without much difficulty.

The site of this ruined cottage, however, had no terrors for the
neighbours, or rather for the neighbour, my shepherd. In fact, he seemed
to have forgotten the legend till I reminded him of it, for I had come
across the tale in my researches into the Unexplained. The shepherd and
his family, indeed, were quite devoid of superstition, and in this
respect very unlike the northern Highlanders. However, the fallen
cottage had nothing to do with my own little adventure in Glen Aline, and
I mention it merely as the most notable of the tiny ruins which attest
the presence, in the past, of a larger population. One cannot marvel
that the people "flitted" from the moors and morasses of Glen Aline into
less melancholy neighbourhoods. The very sheep seemed scarcer here than
elsewhere; grouse-disease had devastated the moors, sportsmen
consequently did not visit them; and only a few barren pairs, with crow-
picked skeletons of dead birds in the heather now and then, showed that
the s