rk and the breeks, Souple Tam, as he fondly thinks, shows the way
to win, and clears them all like a frog or a roebuck. "Clear the way,
clear the way for the callant, Kit's comin!" cries Ebenezer Brackenrigg,
the Elder, a douce man now, but a deevil in his youth, and like "a waff
o' lichtnin'" past their een, Kit clears the barrows a foot beyond
Souple Tam, and at the first fly is declared victor by acclamation. Oh,
our unprophetic soul, did the day indeed dawn--many long years after
this our earliest great conquest yet traditional in the parish--that ere
nightfall witnessed our defeat by--a tailor! The Flying Tailor of
Ettrick--the Lying Shepherd thereof--would they had never been born--the
one to triumph and the other to record that triumph;--yet let us be just
to the powers of our rival--for though all the world knows we were lame
when we leapt him, long past our prime, had been wading all day in the
Yarrow with some stones-weight in our creel, and allowed him a yard,

"Great must I call him, for he vanquish'd ME."

What a place at night was that Moor! At night! That is a most
indeterminate mode of expression, for there are nights of all sorts and
sizes, and what kind of a night do we mean? Not a mirk night, for no man
ever walked that moor on a mirk night, except one, and he, though
blind-fou, was drowned. But a night may be dark without being mirk, with
or without stars; and on many such a night have we, but not always
alone--who was with us you shall never know--threaded our way with no
other clue than that of evolving recollections, originally notices,
across that wilderness of labyrinths, fearlessly, yet at times with a
beating heart. Our companion had her clue too, one in her pocket, of
blue worsted, with which she kept in repair all the stockings belonging
to the family, and one in her memory, of green ethereal silk, which,
finer far than any spider's web, she let out as she tript along the
moor, and on her homeward way she felt, by some spiritual touch, the
invisible lines, along which she retript as safely as if they had been
moonbeams. During such journeyings we never saw the moor, how then can
you expect us to describe it?

But oftener we were alone. Earthquakes abroad are dreadful occurrences,
and blot out the obituary. But here they are so gentle that the heedless
multitude never feel them, and on hearing you tell of them, they
incredulously stare. That moor made no show of religion, but was a
Quak