ALLOA TO SKYE. 365 



regions, and the dogs/from some cause or other, view 

 the roving pigs with the deepest disgust. One of them 

 sauntered into the little school-room in the course 

 of the service, and in an instant the whole pack were 

 on foot a gallant black, which had sat with its 

 paws on our knees or round our neck for a consider- 

 able portion of the service, in affectionate remem- 

 brance of two butter pats at Portree getting away 

 well at the hams. We heard them carrying a tre- 

 mendous head over the peat bogs and through the 

 oats. Two or three of the minister's sentences were 

 completely drowned in the cry; but he held calmly 

 on, neither looking to the right or left, with the 

 air of a man thoroughly used to such finds and tre- 

 mendous bursts in the open. As for the little old 

 woman in the high cap, who sat with her face to the 

 wall, she never moved a muscle. 



"We walked back with the minister, who strode 

 along in his hoddan grey suit, with a pastoral crook 

 to aid him. A strange time we had of it, among 

 wind, showers, and rainbows now dodging behind 

 a peat stack, now under a wall, and hearing for our 

 comfort that " the wet comes here in cycles. 3 ' He had 

 been brought up in a stern school, when, as he 

 phrased it, "Latin was flying about at many a 

 table," and when, with a gillie to carry his lug- 

 gage, he had to walk his two hundred miles as a 

 student, to pluck the tree of knowledge at St. An- 

 drews. He told us a very sad tale of the destitution 

 of his poor parishioners in the winter ; and how many 



