204 LOCH CRERAN. 



Well, the fact is, we scarcely agree that the act in question 

 was so foolish as was our weakly refraining from following 

 up the attempt until it had been a success. For the first 

 time in our experience, amid the throng of business, a 

 really magnificent dragon-fly was jerking its unaccustomed 

 way up our principal street. Now it swerved aside from 

 a tram only to meet the danger of a highly-poised hansom- 

 cabman. Here it almost fled into the face of a police- 

 man, only to rebound under the nose of a cab horse. 

 Up it soared, to remove from the turmoil, but the din 

 and bustle seemed to disorganise its intelligence, and 

 once more it is only avoiding by rebounding movements 

 the trams, cabs, and hurrying foot-passengers of our most 

 thronged of thoroughfares. We pretend to be absorbed 

 in ruminating whether or not to remove our various 

 deposits from the Limited Scotch banks to the Bank of 

 England, and assume the sternly contemplative expression 

 of a great financier, as we conceive him to be, while we 

 follow the flight of the stranger from the country up and 

 down, round and across, in its wayward wanderings. 

 No one else in all that crowd could find an eye for the 

 beautiful interloper, and we amused ourselves for a time 

 watching whether any of the faces into which it nearly 

 popped over and over again, took any notice of it. But 

 not one seemed even to note its presence, or surely the 

 eye would have changed expression, and the swamp with 

 the groves of iris, and the pond with the water lilies of 

 their boyhood, been tossed for one vivid moment before 

 their mental sight. Whence and how could this brilliant 

 son of a water-nymph arrive in the centre of a great city, 

 to pursue his excited, jerky existence ? Our only explan- 

 ation pointed to the vegetable and fruit shops of the 

 vicinity, to which it must have been brought when at 



