crags, where he made
sure of catching a sheep, which seemed just as he tried to seize it to
merge into the spray of the waterfall that leaped down a kind of natural
staircase of rocks, he felt so exhausted that he lay down on a knoll in
the fissures of the rock, exclaiming: "Surely I must be bewitched!"

A loud laugh reverberated from the rocks below, and Gilbert slightly
raised his head to see whence it proceeded. Seeing no one, he concluded
it must be the cry of some strange bird, caught up by the echo, and then
to drive away a kind of grisly feeling of terror that began to creep
upon him, he took up his fiddle as he lay stretched on the grass, and
fell to scraping away without the slightest regard to time or tune, more
as if he were sawing a piece of wood, than playing on a musical
instrument. He then became aware of a very curious thing, which was that
the sheep all returned as he drew the bow backwards, tho' they were off
again the moment he drew it forwards. This convinced him he had not
attended to the manner in which the lady drew the bow, and accounted for
his losing the sheep every evening. "Now," thought he, "I am sure of
obtaining the kiss and the cup of wine, and I need take no further
trouble about the flock."

Bye and bye what he had taken for the gnarled and knotted branches of a
tree, at a short distance from the spot where he was lounging, gradually
assumed a human shape, and he saw the old Scotch shepherd advancing
towards him.

"So you have found it out at last!" said he with a merry twinkle in his
eye, "and what are you going to do next?"

"Do?" echoed Gilbert, "why I shall roam about all day, and bring the
sheep home every evening without a bit of trouble; and then the lady
will be pleased with me, and who knows, as there seems to be no other
young men hereabouts, but what she may make me the lord of her fine
castle."

The Scotchman laughed loud and long, and it was not till Gilbert had
nearly lost his temper that he could be induced to explain the cause of
his mirth, and then he said: "Why, man, you have gone clean mad, and no
wonder, as this fine lady of yours has been drugging you with Elfin wine
to make a fool of you. If you don't mind she'll keep you here like a
horse in a mill all the days of your life, running after clouds you
mistake for sheep."

Gilbert winced at this, and did not half like to be told he was a
day-dreamer. He maintained he saw the flocks all round him, while Sandy