increased.

At length we arrived at Dunse, and a great crowd was there to meet
us--wives to welcome their husbands, parents to greet their children, and
children their parents. The first that my eyes singled out, was a sister of
my Agnes. She ran up to me.

"Roger," she cried, "hae ye seen onything o' Robie?"

The words went through my breast as if it had received the fire of a whole
French battalion. I stood stock-still, petrified with despair. My looks
told my answer to her question.

"Oh, dear me! dear me!" I heard her cry; "what will his puir mother do
noo--for she already is like ane clean out o' her judgment about him."

I did not stop for the word "halt," or for the breaking of the lines; and I
went home, I may say by instinct, for neither bird, bush, house nor tree,
man nor bairn, was I capable of discerning by the road. Grief and
heart-bursting anxiety were as scales upon my eyes. I remember of rushing
into the house, throwing down my gun, and crying--"O Agnes! Agnes!" And as
well do I remember her impatient and piteous inquiry--"Where is my
Robie?--Oh, where is my son?--hae ye no seen him?"

It was long before I could compose myself, so as to tell her all that I
knew concerning him; and it was even longer before she was sufficiently
calm to comprehend me. Never did unhappy parents before experience greater
bitterness of soul. I strove to comfort her, but she would not listen to my
words; for oh, they were as the blind leading the blind; we both were
struggling in the slough of despair--both were in the pit of dark,
bewildering misery. We sometimes sat looking at each other, like criminals
whose last hour is come; and even when our grief wore itself into a "calm
sough," there was something in our silence as dismal and more hopeless than
the silence of the grave itself. But, every now and then, she would burst
into long, loud lamentations, mourning and crying for "her son!--her son!"
Often, too, did we sit, suppressing our very breath, listening to every
foot that approached, and as one disappointment followed another, her
despair became deeper and deeper, louder and louder, and its crushing
weight sank heavier and heavier upon my spirit.

Some of his young companions informed us, that Robin had long expressed a
determination to be a soldier; and, on the following day, I set out for
Edinburgh to seek for him there, and to buy him off at any price, if he had
enlisted.

There, however, I could gather no t