DONALD MILLER. 57 



scanty during the droughts of summer, but sometimes 

 more than sufficiently formidable in winter sweeping 

 past it on the other. The series of storms came on, and 

 Donald found that he had gained nothing by shutting 

 up his shop. 



' He had built a bulwark in the old, cumbrous Cro- 

 marty style of the last century, and confined the wander- 

 ings of the stream by two straight walls. Across the 

 walls he had just thrown a wooden bridge, and crowned 

 the bulwark with a parapet, when on came the first of 

 the storms a night of sleet and hurricane and lo ! in 

 the morning the bulwark lay utterly overthrown ; and 

 the bridge, as if it had marched to its assistance, lay 

 beside it, half buried in sea-wrack. " Ah ! " ex- 

 claimed the neighbours, " it would be as well for us to 

 be as sure of our summer's employment as Donald 

 Miller, honest man ! " The summer came ; the bridge 

 strided over the stream as before ; the bulwark was 

 built anew, and with such neatness and apparent strength, 

 that no bulwark on the beach could compare with it ! 

 Again came winter; and the second bulwark, with its 

 proud parapet and rock-like strength, shared the fate of 

 the first ! Donald fairly took to his bed : he rose, how- 

 ever, with renewed vigour, and a third bulwark, more 

 thoroughly finished than even the second, stretched, ere 

 the beginning of the autumn, between his property and 

 the sea. Throughout the whole of that summer, from 

 grey morning to grey evening, there might be seen on 

 the shore of Cromarty a decent-looking, elderly man, 

 armed with lever and mattock, rolling stones, or raising 

 .them from their beds in the sand, or fixing them together 

 in a sloping wall, toiling as never labourer toiled, and 

 ever and anon, as a neighbour sauntered the way, straight- 

 ening his weary back and tendering the ready snuff-box. 



