as hurried into crime, might have
adorned the annals of the brave.

The minister of Glenorquhy left Dunbarton immediately after he had
witnessed the last scene of this melancholy catastrophe. His reason
acquiesced in the justice of the sentence, which required blood
for blood, and he acknowledged that the vindictive character of his
countrymen required to be powerfully restrained by the strong curb of
social law. But still he mourned over the individual victim. Who may
arraign the bolt of Heaven when it bursts among the sons of the forest?
yet who can refrain from mourning when it selects for the object of
its blighting aim the fair stem of a young oak, that promised to be the
pride of the dell in which it flourished? Musing on these melancholy
events, noon found him engaged in the mountain passes, by which he was
to return to his still distant home.

Confident in his knowledge of the country, the clergyman had left the
main road, to seek one of those shorter paths, which are only used by
pedestrians, or by men, like the minister, mounted on the small, but
sure-footed, hardy, and sagacious horses of the country. The place which
he now traversed was in itself gloomy and desolate, and tradition had
added to it the terror of superstition, by affirming it was haunted
by an evil spirit, termed CLOGHT-DEARG--that is, Redmantle--who at all
times, but especially at noon and at midnight, traversed the glen, in
enmity both to man and the inferior creation, did such evil as her power
was permitted to extend to, and afflicted with ghastly terrors those
whom she had not license otherwise to hurt.

The minister of Glenorquhy had set his face in opposition to many of
these superstitions, which he justly thought were derived from the dark
ages of Popery, perhaps even from those of paganism, and unfit to be
entertained or believed by the Christians of an enlightened age. Some
of his more attached parishioners considered him as too rash in opposing
the ancient faith of their fathers; and though they honoured the moral
intrepidity of their pastor, they could not avoid entertaining and
expressing fears that he would one day fall a victim to his temerity,
and be torn to pieces in the glen of the Cloght-dearg, or some of
those other haunted wilds, which he appeared rather to have a pride
and pleasure in traversing alone, on the days and hours when the wicked
spirits were supposed to have especial power over man and beast.

These legends