in their fastnesses above the cascade; huddled into a small compass and for there nature had defended them seen at once. The waterfall shot in her strongest manner. As one from a height of about seventy feet, ascended the torrent, there was on and the precipitous rock on each side, the left a forest thick with pines, and had an elevation of at least twice as interrupted by lakes and marshes; much more; so that to have gained and, on the right, a succession of the top, John must have climbed crag rising over crag, in such a man- like the mountain cat, or soared like ner that no human being, or indeed the raven. There was, indeed, one wing-less thing of any sort, could at- little path, (if path it could be called,) tempt to descend, without the cer- in which one had to creep in the tainty of being dashed to pieces. In dark below fallen fragments of the those crags, the ravens, from which rock, for some ten feet at a time, the cascade takes its appropriate and through a crevice of about two cognomen, build their eyries, and feet in diameter, in which there was rear their ravenous brood, despite no knowing what might be concealthe muttered vengeance of the neigh- ed; and in which the gripe of a bouring shepherds, whose flocks are mountain-cat, or a mountaineer, made to pay tithes to those dark- would have been alternatives equalnested gentry, and in contempt of ly fearful and fatal to John Rose. the efforts of the most daring hunters. Nor was this all; for, just as one Nor is the place more accessible approached the falling sheet of water, from the source of the torrent that and was drenched by the spray, and lies distant in the summit of a moun- made dizzy by the motion and the tain, which can be passed with dif- din, one stood upon scanty and slipficulty by the most adventurous tra- pery footing, and looked down upon veller; and even though the road a tremendous cauldron of black and that way were easy, it is long,-full tumbling water, full fifty feet below, thirty miles to go, and twenty to re- of which no one could see the enturn; and though John Rose might trance or the outlet for the overhanghave continued to make the former ing and frightful crags, and of which part of the journey upon his poney, no man knew, or felt disposed to in about two days, it would have fathom, the depth. taken him at least an equal time to perform the latter on foot, in a place where peat and heather would have been both his bed and his board. Besides, though John had undertaken this long and perilous journey, and though there had been no chance of his meeting "the braw M'Craws," bringing tea and tobacco from the west coast to barter for that dew, of which he wished to prevent the circulation and influence; and against whom, if he had happened to meet them, the insurance of his safe return would have been full cent per cent upon his value; the alarm would have been given, and John would have been drubbed and driven back, long before he had reached the place of his desires.

In the fourth quarter, or from the Strath, the approach is more terrific, because all the terrors of it are

Into this abyss would John Rose have been compelled to look, after he had overcome the perils of the passage formerly mentioned; and not only would he have had to cast upon it, what would have been fatal to most men under such circumstances, a passing look; but he would have had to hang suspended over it for some time, to ruminate upon the still greater peril which then presented itself. At the point where one comes SO near to the fall, that the spray makes sight difficult, and foot ing and grasp impossible to any thing but naked feet, and hard hands which have long been inured to cling to the rock, as a fly does to the window, or a boy's" sucker" to a pebble-being pressed down at the sides, and drawn up in the middle by that peculiar action of the muscles which the bands and feet of climbers of rocks acquire,

without the owner being able to tell how, just at that point, a plate of schistus, of much harder texture than the rest, projects about two feet for ward, and overhangs from an elevation, to the top of which one dares not look up.

It is true that, upon the edge of this curtain of rock, there is a little step, or indenture, of the depth of about three inches; and it is also true, that one who knows the other side of the rock can grasp it with perfect security, and, by dexterously "changing step" and making a spring, land upon a stony platform on the other side, where all is safe, and where there is a natural parapet, to protect one equally from the gulf and the cataract. At the same time it is equally true, that no one who has seen only one side of the rock, could easily prevail on himself to pass it either way, though those on the other side were making their every effort to encourage and aid him. Much less could John Rose, the gauger, against whom every vengeance was vowed, and every hostility carried on, dare to make the attempt, where one child of ten years old might have stood in safety and silence, and plunged ten thousand gaugers, seriatim, into the abyss, whence they would have been carried, the Lord knows where.

In

the place; but that which, if he could have reached it, would have given him a little profit to console him for the banterings and bangs to which he was forced to submit, and, what was his grand object, have recommended him to a more lucrative and less perilous district, was quite inaccessible; and though John Rose could see the blue smoke curling through the crevices, and though the breeze came perfumed with the fragrauce of the dew, yet not on one thimbleful of it could he set the broad arrow of the king.

consequence of these formidable barriers in the way, John Rose, the gauger, could not interfere with the distillation of the dew; and thus his operations were confined to intercepting the malt, and seizing the spirits when made, and in the act of being conveyed to other parts of the district; operations in which, from the numbers and determination of the escorts, John had usually more broil than profit. He used to watch in the neighbourhood, however; and when the wind set down the dell, he has often been seen snuffing up the scent of that which he could not reach; or eyeing the operations, as a cat eyes a sparrow on an unaccessi

ble twig.

Often did John Rose linger about 27 ATHENEUM, VOL. 9, 2d series.

So totally unproductive was John's district, that his superiors began to hint that he was in league with the illicit distillers, and cognizant of the spoliation of that revenue; upon which he was, at the same time, a dead weight to the full amount of his salary. To John Rose, the most zealous of gaugers, to him whose days were spent in watching and his n ghts in dreaming of that prey, which, had he been ten John Roses, he could not have reached, this was a most bitter accusation; and the bitterness was deepened by the reflection that it would lead to his dismissal; and John Rose, the gentleman gauger, would have to sink down into the laborious ditcher, which was his calling before he was united in holy wedlock with the handmaid of parson Rory; and soon thereafter made to taste the sweets of patriarchal blessedness.

Out of this unpleasant predicament, John Rose was determined to work himself, or perish in the attempt. But how to do the former, and avoid the latter, was the rub, The fatal rock and the yawning gulf, the dreary forest, the stupendous height of Mam Suil, the everlasting ice of Loch na' Nuin; with the crags, the wild cats, and worse than all, the cudgels and dirks of the Chisholms, beset the place in formidable array. He thumped and scratched the outside of his cranium, to stimulate his organ of investigation; and he kept cannonading the same with snuff, pinch after pinch, till resolution came

upon him to thread the mazes of the forest.

Arming himself with pistols and provend, he began his journey at midnight, and ere grey dawn he was on the outskirt of the forest, and had the satisfaction of being secured against the heat of the sun, by that close and cooling investure, a Scotch mist; which, at the same time that it watered him copiously for his journey, so circumscribed his vision, that it did not extend beyond the next pine. If you take a kitchen-poker, which has stood for some time by the fire (if leaning southward all the better,) give it two or three smart taps on the floor, to shake out any disturbed polarizations that may be in it; and then holding it as nearly as you can in the direction and dip of the magnetic needle, bring the south or upper end of it near the north of a compass, it would attract the said north very powerfully. But if you then, holding the south where it was, reverse the poker by turning it over, and making that which was the south the north, the north point of the compass will fly, and the whole will be reversed. Those who have been in the habit of travelling in a trackless country, get a compass in their heads. How it comes there one cannot very well tell but it does come, and clear or cloudy, day or night, it points out the direction with wonderful accuracy.

Nature sometimes reverses this compass, without any application of a poker; and so powerful is the impression, that when under its influence, one can hardly persuade one's-self that the midday sun is not due north. What influence the whiskey that Johu Rose took with him and in him, in order that it might instinctively go to that of which he was in quest, might have had in the matter, there is no knowing; but certain it is that the compass in John's head got sadly out of sorts; and through the live-long day he could not get out of the forest, unless at the point where he entered, to which he came unintentionally more than twenty times; so that, when evening

came, there was nothing for John Rose but to make the best of his way home.

The best of a disappointed man's way is not very good, even in the best kept thoroughfare in the world; and those who have had the fortune to be alone in the dark upon the hills of Strathglass, need not be told that the best of Johu Rose's way, was nothing to be desired or boasted of.

The physical perils in his way were not small; pits, precipices, pools, cataracts, and quagmires; besides the unpleasant yelling of the wild cats, on all sides of him, the sharp bark of the fox upon the hill, and the ear-piercing boom of the bit tern from the mire. There were metaphysical alarms too. John was deeply imbued with the superstitions of his country: he heard the mocking neigh of the "water kelpie" through the mournful wail of the falling stream; and that fellest of imps the ignis fatuus, was ever and anon holding up his lantern, to lure John Rose into all sorts of dangerous places.

Still John tottered and trembled on, mingling prayers and curses, till he came to a place more tangled and wild than any he had yet encountered. Here a real light glared upon him for a moment, and as its last flicker stole from him, the little glinmer that the stars cast through the fog, there glided past, plain to his vision, that horrible apparition, the Bhodaich Ghlais, the certain harbinger of death. John yelled out; forward he sprang, and the next instant he was many fathoms under the earth, not much stunned by the fall, but so hurt with heat and smoke and sulphur, that he verily believed that he had passed the doom of which the Bhodaich had warned him, and entered upon his final retribution in the place of woe.

A gripe like that of a tiger was upon his throat; a dagger gleamed over him; and a voice which made the earth rock again, exclaimed, "Are you Shohn Rose, ta gaäger?"

THE MURDER.