namenting the
course of the Tweed, as they had been placed alternately along the
north and south bank, generally from three to six hundred yards from
it--sometimes on the shin, and sometimes in the hollow of a hill. In
the vault of this tower it was the practice of these men to conceal
the sheep they had recently stolen; and while the rest of their
people were absent on Sunday at the church, they used to employ
themselves in cancelling with their knives the ear-marks, and
impressing with a hot iron a large O upon the face, that covered both
sides of the animal's nose, for the purpose of obliterating the brand
of the true owner. While his accomplices were so busied, Yarrow kept
watch in the open air, and gave notice, without fail, by his barking,
of the approach of strangers.

The farmer and his servant were tried at Edinburgh in January 1773,
and the proceedings excited an extraordinary interest, not only in the
audience, but amongst the legal officials. Hyslop, the principal
witness, gave so many curious particulars respecting the instincts of
sheep, and the modes of distinguishing them both by natural and
artificial marks, that he was highly complimented by the bench. The
evidence was so complete, that both culprits were found guilty and
expiated their crime on the scaffold.

The general tradition is, that Yarrow was also put to death, though in
a less ceremonious manner; but this has probably no other foundation
than a _jeu d'esprit_, which was cried through the streets of
Edinburgh as his dying speech. We have been informed that the dog was
in reality purchased, after the execution of Millar, by a sheep-farmer
in the neighbourhood, but did not take kindly to honest courses, and
his new master having no work of a different kind in which to engage
him, he was remarked to show rather less sagacity than the ordinary
shepherd's dog.

An instance of shrewd discrimination in the shepherd's dog, almost as
remarkable as that of poor Yarrow, was mentioned a few years ago in a
Greenock newspaper. In the course of last summer, says the narrator,
it chanced that the sheep on the farm of a friend of ours, on the
water of Stinchar, were, like those of his neighbours, partially
affected with that common disease, maggots in the skin, to cure which
distemper it is necessary to cut off the wool over the part affected,
and apply a small quantity of tobacco juice, or some other liquid. For
this purpose the shepherd set off to the hi