yself. I was soundly
pummelled during the night by a frightful female, who first assumed the
appearance of the miserable pauper woman whom I had seen beside the
Auldgrande, and then became the Lady of Balconie; and, though
sufficiently indignant, and much inclined to resist, I could stir
neither hand nor foot, but lay passively on my back, jambed fast behind
the huge gneiss boulder and the edge of the gulf. And yet, by a strange
duality of perception, I was conscious all the while that, having got
wet on the previous day, I was now suffering from an attack of
nightmare: and held that it would be no very serious matter even should
the lady tumble me into the gulf, seeing that all would be well again
when I awoke in the morning. Dreams of this character, in which
consciousness bears reference at once to the fictitious events of the
vision and the real circumstances of the sleeper, must occupy, I am
inclined to think, very little time,--single moments, mayhap, poised
midway between the sleeping and waking state. Next day (Sunday) I
attended the Free Church in the parish, where I found a numerous and
attentive congregation,--descendants, in large part, of the old devout
Munroes of Ferindonald,--and heard a good solid discourse. And on the
following morning I crossed the sea at what is known as the Fowlis
Ferry, to explore, on my homeward route, the rocks laid bare along the
shore in the upper reaches of the Frith.

I found but little by the way: black patches of bitumen in the sandstone
of one of the beds, with a bed of stratified clay, inclosing nodules, in
which, however, I succeeded in detecting nothing organic; and a few
fragments of clay-slate locked up in the Red Sandstone, sharp and
unworn at their edges, as if derived from no great distance, though
there be now no clay-slate in the eastern half of Ross; but though the
rocks here belong evidently to the ichthyolitic member of the Old Red,
not a single fish, not a "nibble" even, repaid the patient search of
half a day. I, however, passed some time agreeably enough among the
ruins of Craighouse. When I had last seen, many years before, this old
castle,[21] the upper stories were accessible; but they were now no
longer so. Time, and the little herdboys who occasionally shelter in its
vaults, had been busy in the interval; and, by breaking off a few
projecting corners by which the climber had held, and by effacing a few
notches into which he had thrust his toe-points, th