IN THE HIGHLANDS 221 



puppies, which he carried about and used to sell, ' for 

 the amusement of the children,' to the poorest crofters, 

 for the more prosperous ones rarely have dogs. Now, 

 his bothy, before the rain changed the gravelly course 

 of the river, stood on the bank of a deep black pool. 

 This pool soon lost all its water, and was then exposed 

 as the cemetery for innumerable bones of sheep, which 

 had undoubtedly been thrown in there from the bothy, 

 where the mutton had been consumed, though never 

 bought for the family supply. 



'* I had been joking once with Rory Oag about his 

 never improving his stock, as all others did, by buying 

 new rams. He decided to follow my advice, and 

 actually bought a good ram and sent him off to the hill 

 among the ewes. A few days after, longing for a look 

 of him, he took a walk on the moor, where his dog 

 directed his notice to — his new ram's head ! A mutton- 

 lover had caught and killed it, and carried off the body, 

 but had left the huge horned head as being too heavy 

 for its value in broth ! The thief was evidently sorry 

 to see such an unusually fat sheep on Rory's moor, and 

 probably ' borrowed ' him the very night he was turned 

 loose. Rory never threw his money away again to 

 improve his stock. In cases so strongly suspicious as 

 these I have mentioned, I always saved Sheriff, Lord 

 Advocate, etc., all trouble, by merely evicting paupers 

 and crofters who had no visible means of support to 

 make them fat and rosy, at the request in private of 

 all their suffering neighbours. 



" Sheep-stealing on a different and large scale was 

 then general all over the north. Ere I became tenant 

 of Wyvis, a Mr. Mitchell had it stocked with black. 



