he Hermitage and
Slitterick, near Hawick; to the banks of the Dee, near Kirkcudbright;
and, above and beyond all, to the woods of Colliston, and the linns of
Balachun, on the Nith, in Dumfries-shire; and it is to this last
locality that the following narrative particularly refers.

It was about the middle of the month of October that a packman, or
pedlar, with an enormous chest laid transverse on his shoulders, was
seen wending his way up the banks of the Nith, from Manchester to
Glasgow. He had hoped to have reached Thornhill, then an exceedingly
small village, before dusk; but this being his first migration in this
direction, he found himself so surrounded and obstructed by the river
Nith on the one hand, the linns of Balachun on the other, and an almost
impenetrable wood in front, that night came upon him, dark and moonless,
whilst still pushing his way through brambles, thorns, and every species
of tangling and perplexing underwood. At last, despairing of extricating
himself, and terrified, at the same time, by the roaring of waters,
howling of wild beasts, and hooting of owls, he extricated his shoulders
from the pack-bands, and, selecting as dry and soft an apartment as
circumstances permitted, he set himself down on the grassy turf, with a
birch branch for his canopy, and the old stump of a tree for his lean.
In a little time he was alarmed by the cries of what appeared to be a
child in the act of being cruelly murdered. Mungo Clark (for such was
the packman's name) rose, and, advancing a few steps in the direction of
the now faintly-emitted sounds, found a hare in the act of expiring of
strangulation by means of a noose, or girn, formed of strong wire, and
placed so as to intercept a little footpath made by the feet of the wild
animals of the forest. Mungo was in the act of disengaging the dead
creature from its executioner, the noose, when he heard the rustling as
if of a lion on the spring, very near him, and all at once he found
himself in the iron grip of a customer with whom he had no wish, on
this occasion at least, to deal.

"And wha are ye," were the sounds which, in a hollow and harsh tone,
first greeted his ears--"and wha are ye, man, wha hae made yer bed this
dark night wi' the howlets and the wull-cats--ye wha meddle wi' what
naething concerns ye, and burn yer fingers in ither folk's kail-pats?
Speak, man, and dinna keep me blethering here, for I hae got ither fish
to fry, I trow, than standing here