lies the village of Kinnesswood, noted as the birthplace of
the poet Michael Bruce. A native of this village entered the army, and
there learned manners at war with good morals, which, after his
discharge, brought upon him the vengeance of the law, and he was
banished 'beyond seas.' His subsequent good-conduct, however, procured
him 'a ticket-of-leave,' and he became servant to the commissariat for
the convicts in Van Diemen's Land. In this capacity he had frequent
opportunities of seeing the substance brought from the Bathurst
'diggings,' containing the gold which is now arriving in this country
in such large quantities. It at once struck him that he had seen
abundance of the same material in his native hills, when visiting the
quarries in which several of his friends and acquaintances earned
their livelihood. This impression he conveyed in a letter to his
mother, who, as a matter of course, afforded the information to all to
whom she had an opportunity of communicating it. The intelligence
spread with the rapidity of an electric telegraph; and an excitement
was produced such as is seen among bees when their hive has received
a sudden shock. The mountain pathways became immediately alive with
human beings, and noises arose like the hum of a city heard at a
distance during the busiest hours of the day. In the villages
immediately adjoining the place of resort, the excitement was wholly
confined to youngsters and idlers, who are ever ready to seize upon
novelty and enter upon bustle; but further off, it extended to old and
young, hale and infirm, asthmatic and long-winded, grave and gay,
taught and untaught, respectable and disreputable, industrious and
idle, till it reached a compass of twenty miles at least, extending
not only to the Forth and Tay, but stretching inland from their
opposite shores. In short, men who had never climbed a mountain all
their lives before, though living in close proximity to one, were seen
on its loftiest peaks, and toiling there with all the ardour of
Cyclops.

Meanwhile, some of the less impulsive minds in the district, not
altogether untouched by the prevailing mania, began to cast about for
warrants to justify their appropriation of some of this much-coveted
material, and assure their confidence that it was really gold. Memory,
research, tradition, testimony, all came to their help. They
recollected how their fathers had told them that the Laird of Lathrisk
had wrought a lead-mine on t