er." Off we set. It was a clear, dark, starlight, frosty
night. They had their leisters and tar torches, and it was something
worth seeing--the wild flame, the young fellows striking the fish coming
to the light--how splendid they looked with the light on their scales,
coming out of the darkness--the stumblings and quenchings suddenly of
the lights, as the torch-bearer fell into a deep pool. We got home past
midnight, and slept as we seldom sleep now. In the morning Adam, who had
been long up, and had been up the "_Hope_" with his dog, when he saw we
had wakened, told us there was four inches of snow, and we soon saw it
was too true. So we had to go home without our cryptogamic prize.

It turned out that Adam, who was an old man and frail, and had made some
money, was going at Whitsunday to leave, and live with his son in
Glasgow. We had been admiring the beauty and gentleness and perfect
shape of Wylie, the finest colley I ever saw, and said, "What are you
going to do with Wylie?" "'Deed," says he, "I hardly ken. I canna think
o' sellin' her, though she's worth four pound, and she'll no like the
toun." I said, "Would you let me have her?" and Adam, looking at her
fondly--she came up instantly to him, and made of him--said, "Ay, I
wull, if ye'll be gude to her;" and it was settled that when Adam left
for Glasgow she should be sent into Albany Street by the carrier.

She came, and was at once taken to all our hearts, even grandmother
liked her; and though she was often pensive, as if thinking of her
master and her work on the hills, she made herself at home, and behaved
in all respects like a lady. When out with me, if she saw sheep in the
streets or road, she got quite excited, and helped the work, and was
curiously useful, the being so making her wonderfully happy. And so her
little life went on, never doing wrong, always blithe and kind and
beautiful. But some months after she came, there was a mystery about
her: every Tuesday evening she disappeared; we tried to watch her, but
in vain, she was always off by nine P. M., and was away all night,
coming back next day wearied and all over mud, as if she had travelled
far. She slept all next day. This went on for some months and we could
make nothing of it. Poor dear creature, she looked at us wistfully when
she came in, as if she would have told us if she could, and was
especially fond, though tired.

Well, one day I was walking across the Grassmarket, with Wylie at my