auld Doofie, the half-crazy horse-doctor, mounted on his lang-
tailed naig, and away through the dark by himsell, at the dead hour o'
night, to the relief of a man's mare seized with the batts, somewhere
down about Oxenford."

I was glad that Tammie's story had ended in this way, when out came
another tramping on its heels.

"Do you see the top of yon black trees to the eastward there, on the
braehead?"

"I think I do," was my reply. "But how far, think ye, are we from home
now?"

"About a mile and a half," said Tammie.--"Weel, as to the trees, I'll
tell ye something about them.

"There was an auld widow-leddy lived langsyne about the town-end of
Dalkeith. A sour, cankered, curious body--she's dead and rotten lang
ago. But what I was gaun to say, she had a bonny bit fair-haired, blue-
ee'd lassie of a servant-maid that lodged in the house wi' her, just by
all the world like a lamb wi' an wolf; a bonnier quean, I've heard tell,
never steppit in leather shoon; so all the young lads in the gate-end
were wooing at her, and fain to have her; but she wad only have ae joe
for a' that. He was a journeyman wright, a trades-lad, and they had
come, three or four year before, frae the same place thegither--maybe
having had a liking for ane anither since they were bairns; so they were
gaun to be married the week after Da'keith Fair, and a' was settled. But
what, think ye, happened? He got a drap drink, and a recruiting party
listed him in the king's name, wi' pitting a white shilling in his loof.

"When the poor lassie heard what had come to pass, and how her sweetheart
had ta'en the bounty, she was like to gang distrackit, and took to her
bed. The doctor never took up her trouble; and some said it was a fever.
At last she was roused out o't, but naebody ever saw her laugh after; and
frae ane that was as cantie as a lintie, she became as douce as a Quaker,
though she aye gaed cannily about her wark, as if amaist naething had
happened. If she was ony way light-headed before, to be sure she wasna
that noo; but just what a decent quean should be, sitting for hours by
the kitchen fire her lane, reading the Bible, and thinking, wha kens, of
what wad become o' the wicked after they died; and so ye see"--

"What light is yon?" said I, interrupting him, wishing him like to break
off.

"Ou, it's just the light on some of the coal-hills. The puir blackened
creatures will be gaun down to their wark. It's an unyearthly kind o