HIS BIRTHPLACE AND EARLY TRAINING. / 



derful field for developing his muscles, strengthening his 

 nerves, and instilling quieter and deeper lessons into his 

 youthful heart, which, in after years, moulded and elevated 

 the man. There was the long, pebbly beach, between the 

 Cowie and the sea, to which the boys used to wade in ebb 

 tide, to play with the plunging waves, bathe in their waters, 

 and seek for the pretty pink, ribbed shell (Cyprcea Eiiroped) 

 to be found there, a favourite both for its beauty and for its 

 rarity known by the Pentland Firth and vended there as 

 " Groatie buckies," and called, in sacred lona, by the great 

 name of St. Columba, and sold there also by the children. 

 There were the breezy Links, where the new town now 

 stands, with their undulating hollows, redolent with wild 

 flowers and wavy with bent, the haunt of children and 

 cattle, where Johnnie first saw and smelled the favourites of 

 his life. There was the Bog Well under the Red Braes, 

 across the Carron to the south, to which, when of age, he 

 went daily for water for his mother, and where he was 

 always sure to meet with merry groups of women and 

 bairns bent on the same errand ; for these were the days 

 before water-pipes were dreamt of, and this well supplied 

 the whole town with its famed limpid treasures. There 

 was also the more distant St. Kieran's Well, a good chaly- 

 beate, with healing virtues then in its natural wildness, 

 but now conserved in a granite fountain to which he and 

 his mother walked across the Links, when the pressure of 

 over-toil somewhat relented ; but not during the Sabbath 

 .rest, for in these strict times such journeyings would have 

 been profanation. 



Beyond this, finely set amidst its woods, was the house 

 of Uiy, the abode of that religious enthusiast and sufferer, 



