ay a dead sheep on the deck. It had been sent aboard to be
killed by the minister's factotum, John Stewart; but John was at the
evening preaching at the time, and the poor sheep, in its attempts to
set itself free, had got itself entangled among the cords, and strangled
itself. "Alas, alas!" exclaimed the minister, "thus ends our hope of
fresh mutton for the present, and my hapless speculation as a sheep
farmer for evermore." I learned from him, afterwards, over our tea, that
shortly previous to the Convocation he had got his glebe,--one of the
largest in Scotland,--well stocked with sheep and cattle, which he had
to sell, immediately on the Disruption, in miserably bad condition, at a
loss of nearly fifty per cent. He had a few sheep, however, that would
not sell at all, and that remained on the glebe, in consequence, until
his successor entered into possession. And he, honest man, straightway
impounded them, and got them incarcerated in a dark, dirty hole,
somewhat in the way Giant Despair incarcerated the pilgrims,--a thing he
had quite a legal right to do, seeing that the mile-long glebe, with its
many acres of luxuriant pasture, was now as much his property as it had
been Mr. Swanson's a few months before, and seeing Mr. Swanson's few
sheep had no right to crop his grass. But a worthy neighbor
interfered,--Mr. M'Donald, of Keil, the principal tenant in the island.
Mr. M'Donald,--a practical commentator on the law of kindness,--was
sorely scandalized at what he deemed the new minister's gratuitous
unkindness to a brother in calamity; and, relieving the sheep, he
brought them to his own farm, where he found them board and lodging on
my friend's behalf, till they could be used up at leisure. And it was
one of the last of this unfortunate lot that now contrived to escape
from us by anticipating John Stewart. "A black beginning makes a black
ending," said Gouffing Jock, an ancient border shepherd, when his only
sheep, a black ewe, the sole survivor of a flock smothered in a
snow-storm, was worried to death by his dogs. Then, taking down his
broadsword, he added, "Come awa, my auld friend; thou and I maun e'en
stock Bowerhope-Law ance mair!" Less warlike than Gouffing Jock, we were
content to repeat over the dead, on this occasion, simply the first
portion of his speech; and then, betaking ourselves to our cabin, we
forgot all our sorrows over our tea.

CHAPTER IV.

An Excursion--The Chain of Crosses--Bay of