a surprising increase in the amount of his annual losses. He
questioned his shepherds severely, taxed them with carelessness in
picking up and bringing home the dead, and plainly intimated that he
conceived some unfair dealing to be in progress. The men, finding
themselves thus exposed to suspicions of a very painful kind, were as
much chagrined as the worthy farmer himself, and kept their minds
alive to every circumstance which might tend to afford any elucidation
of the mystery. One day, while they were summering their lambs, the
eye of a very acute old shepherd, named Hyslop, was caught by a
black-faced ewe which they had formerly missed (for the shepherds
generally know every particular member of their flocks), and which
was now suckling its own lamb as if it had never been absent. On
inspecting it carefully, it was found to bear an additional birn upon
its face. Every farmer, it must be mentioned, impresses with a hot
iron a particular letter upon the faces of his sheep, as a means of
distinguishing his own from those of his neighbours. Mr. Gibson's birn
was the letter T, and this was found distinctly enough impressed on
the face of the ewe. But above this mark there was an O, which was
known to be the mark of the tenant of Wormiston, the individual
already mentioned. It was immediately suspected that this and the
other missing sheep had been abstracted by that person; a suspicion
which derived strength from the reports of the neighbouring shepherds,
by whom, it appeared, the black-faced ewe had been tracked for a
considerable way in a direction leading from Wormiston to Newby. It
was indeed ascertained that instinctive affection for her lamb had led
this animal across the Tweed, and over the lofty heights between
Cailzie and Newby; a route of very considerable difficulty, and
probably quite different from that by which she had been led away, but
the most direct that could have been taken. Mr. Gibson only stopped to
obtain the concurrence of a neighbouring farmer, whose losses had been
equally great, before proceeding with some of the legal authorities to
Wormiston, where Millar the shepherd, and his master, were taken into
custody, and conducted to the prison of Peebles. On a search of the
farm, no fewer than thirty-three score of sheep belonging to various
individuals were found, all bearing the condemnatory O above the
original birns; and it was remarked that there was not a single ewe
returned to Grieston, the f