palavering wi' sic as you--come,
speak, body, or I'll send ye, pack an' a', sixty yards lower into the
bumbling pool o' Balachun Linn."

Mungo Clark was neither soldier nor belted knight, nor was he armed for
any deadly conflict; but he was not accustomed to submit without
resentment to such rough usage.

"Unhand me, rascal!" was the packman's reply; and making, at the same
time, a lateral jerk, he twisted himself fairly out of the assailant's
grasp.

A whistle was immediately set up, and in an instant our traveller was
surrounded by four strong, ablebodied men, who immediately flashed the
light side of a dark lantern full in his face.

"Oh ho!" said one of the newly-assembled assailants; "this is neither
the deil, nor the factor, nor the wood-keeper, nor the old boy,
Colliston himsel, but just plain Mungo Clark, Widow Clark o' Penpont's
son, who has been at Manchester feathering his pack, for the first time,
wi' all manner o' varieties; such as Bibles, psalm-books, ribands,
shawls, and waistcoat-pieces. Why, by the flesh-pots o' Yetholm--and
that's a terrible oath--we'll adopt Brother Clark into our number, and
teach him how to snare game, and spear salmon, instead of drivelling
away his time and strength under the pressure of a load" (trying to
raise the pack) "which would break the back-bone of an elephant."

The matter appeared to Mungo to be settled without any consent of his,
asked or obtained; so, knowing somewhat of the character and habits of
this wandering and peculiar race, he was compelled to make a virtue of
necessity, and, raising his pack again on his shoulders, to descend with
them into the very lowest depths of the linns of Balachun. Even at
noonday, on the 23d of June, the Pass, as it is called, is dreary, dark,
and dreadful; but now, under the cover of night, and with no other
guidance than a small lantern, which scarcely made darkness visible,
Mungo hesitated ere he would commit himself to the crossing of a fearful
gully, and the walking along the face of a rock, or scaur, scarcely
eight inches wide, and overhanging a fearful pool, well known by the
terrible appellation of "Hell's Caldron." The party at last arrived at a
small grassy plot, encircled on the one side by the roaring stream
called Clauchry Burn, and on the other by an amphitheatre of steep,
high, and overhanging rocks, fringed and darkened in with brushwood and
furze, and guarded, at the upper and lower extremities, by the rocks,