THURSO TO HELMSDALE. 51 



grew dark and his fascinations were lost upon them ; 

 and he treated us in the intervals of business to 

 divers essays,, clerical and lay. No man suffers less, 

 apparently, from leakage of memory. He knew 

 something about every one, from the minister 

 who came and met his friend, to the bride of 

 three weeks on the "knife-board." One of his 

 primest August uses seemed to be carrying news of 

 the overnight's fishing from village to village ; and 

 an emissary of the beach was always starting up at 

 some corner of the road with the eternal cran query. 

 Fishing-boats were boxing up towards Wick, either 

 to verify the news of a good bank of herrings or to 

 try and mend their luck with the Lammas Stream. 

 A yacht raced us/-and we never could shake her off 

 till she took to tacking near Helmsdale, and then 

 stood across the Firth. The road was dreary and 

 Irish -looking enough for some miles out of Wick. 

 A bourtree or elder-bush attached to the tumble- 

 down cottage compound was the only shade till we 

 reached Lybster, where the nightingales with which 

 the late Sir John Sinclair once vainly strove to make 

 Caithness vocal might have trilled their notes in a 

 pleasant grove. A yellow caravan was bearing along 

 a dwarf and "the Hottentot Venus"; little girls girded 

 their kirtles up to their knee, and chased us for fully 

 two miles, as clear-winded as "Deerfoot" to the 

 finish ; but the poor idiot, who watches year after year 

 at the same gate for the up and down mails, had grown 

 so plethoric on coppers that he could hardly stay two 



