fragment of granite, or
a scathed tree, which had warped its twisted roots into the fissures of
the rock. On the right hand, the mountain rose above the path with almost
equal inaccessibility; but the hill on the opposite side displayed a
shroud of copsewood, with which some pines were intermingled.

'This,' said Evan, 'is the pass of Bally-Brough, which was kept in former
times by ten of the clan Donnochie against a hundred of the Low-Country
carles. The graves of the slain are still to be seen in that little
corrie, or bottom, on the opposite side of the burn; if your eyes are
good, you may see the green specks among the heather. See, there is an
earn, which you Southrons call an eagle. You have no such birds as that
in England. He is going to fetch his supper from the Laird of
Bradwardine's braes, but I 'll send a slug after him.'

He fired his piece accordingly, but missed the superb monarch of the
feathered tribes, who, without noticing the attempt to annoy him,
continued his majestic flight to the southward. A thousand birds of prey,
hawks, kites, carrion-crows, and ravens, disturbed from the lodgings
which they had just taken up for the evening, rose at the report of the
gun, and mingled their hoarse and discordant notes with the echoes which
replied to it, and with the roar of the mountain cataracts. Evan, a
little disconcerted at having missed his mark, when he meant to have
displayed peculiar dexterity, covered his confusion by whistling part of
a pibroch as he reloaded his piece, and proceeded in silence up the pass.

It issued in a narrow glen, between two mountains, both very lofty and
covered with heath. The brook continued to be their companion, and they
advanced up its mazes, crossing them now and then, on which occasions
Evan Dhu uniformly offered the assistance of his attendants to carry over
Edward; but our hero, who had been always a tolerable pedestrian,
declined the accommodation, and obviously rose in his guide's opinion, by
showing that he did not fear wetting his feet. Indeed he was anxious, so
far as he could without affectation, to remove the opinion which Evan
seemed to entertain of the effeminacy of the Lowlanders, and particularly
of the English.

Through the gorge of this glen they found access to a black bog, of
tremendous extent, full of large pit-holes, which they traversed with
great difficulty and some danger, by tracks which no one but a Highlander
could have followed. The path i