f places in the district,
though there were no other more intelligible traditions, might serve to
shew that it is a range of country to which both kings and nobles had
resorted. If from morning to night I was away far from the homes of
living men, I was not so in regard to those of the dead. Where a lesser
stream from the wild uplands comes down and meets the Rankleburn, a
church or chapel once stood, surrounded, like most other consecrated
places of the kind, by a burial-ground. There tradition says that five
dukes, some say kings, lie buried under a marble stone. I had heard that
Sir Walter, then Mr Scott, had, a number of years previously, made a
pilgrimage to this place, for the purpose of discovering the sepulchres
of the great and nearly forgotten dead, but without success. This,
however, tended, in my estimation, to confirm the truth of the
tradition; and having enough of time and opportunity, I made many a
toilsome effort of a similar nature, with the same result. With hills
around, wild and rarely trodden, and the ceaseless yet ever-varying
tinkling of its streams, together with the mysterious echoes which the
least stir seemed to awaken, the place was not only lonely, but also
creative of strange apprehensions, even in the hours of open day. It is
strange that the heart will fear the dead, which, perhaps, never feared
the living. Though I could muster and maintain courage to dig
perseveringly among the dust of the long-departed when the sun shone in
the sky, yet when the shadow of night was coming, or had come down upon
the earth, the scene was sacredly secure from all inroad on my part: and
to make the matter sufficiently intelligible, I may further mention
that, some years afterwards, when I took a fancy one evening to travel
eight miles to meet some friends in a shepherd's lone muirland dwelling,
I made the way somewhat longer for the sake of evading the impressive
loneliness of this locality. I had no belief that I should meet accusing
spirits of the dead; but I disliked to be troubled in waging war with
those _eery_ feelings which are the offspring of superstitious
associations.

"While a lamb-herd at Buccleuch, I read when I could get a book which
was not already threadbare. I had a few chisels, and files, and other
tools, with which I took pleasure in constructing, of wood or bone,
pieces of mechanism; and I kept a diary in which I wrote many minute and
trivial matters, as well, no doubt as I then thoug