that the dream was a very horrible one, from which I could not awaken.
And finally, on reaching a little cleared spot on the edge of the
cultivated country, I dropped down as suddenly as if struck by a bullet,
and, after an ineffectual attempt to rise, fell fast asleep. Walter was
much frightened; but he succeeded in carrying me to a little rick of
dried grass which stood up in the middle of the clearing; and after
covering me well up with the grass, he laid himself down beside me.
Anxiety, however, kept him awake; and he was frightened, as he lay, to
hear the sounds of psalm-singing, in the old Gaelic style, coming
apparently from a neighbouring clump of wood. Walter believed in the
fairies; and, though psalmody was not one of the reputed accomplishments
of the "good people" in the low country, he did not know but that in the
Highlands the case might be different. Some considerable time after the
singing had ceased, there was a slow, heavy step heard approaching the
rick; an exclamation in Gaelic followed; and then a rough hard hand
grasped Walter by the naked heel. He started up, and found himself
confronted by an old, grey-headed man, the inmate of a cottage, which,
hidden in the neighbouring clump, had escaped his notice.

The old man, in the belief that we were gipsies, was at first disposed
to be angry at the liberty we had taken with his hayrick; but Walter's
simple story mollified him at once, and he expressed deep regret that
"poor boys, who had met with an accident," should have laid them down in
such a night under the open sky, and a house so near. "It was putting
disgrace," he said, "on a Christian land." I was assisted into his
cottage, whose only other inmate, an aged woman, the old Highlander's
wife, received us with great kindness and sympathy; and on Walter's
declaring our names and lineage, the hospitable regrets and regards of
both host and hostess waxed stronger and louder still. They knew our
maternal grandfather and grandmother, and remembered old Donald Roy; and
when my cousin named my father, there was a strongly-expressed burst of
sorrow and commiseration, that the son of a man whom they had seen so
"well to do in the world" should be in circumstances so deplorably
destitute. I was too ill to take much note of what passed. I only
remember, that of the food which they placed before me, I could partake
of only a few spoonfuls of milk; and that the old woman, as she washed
my feet, fell a-crying ove