60 THE BANK ACCOUNTANT. 



Their pigs would break into his bleaching greens, and 

 farrow them up with their snouts ; and when he threat- 

 ened to pound them, he would be told " how unthriving 

 a thing it was to keep the puir brutes aye in the fauld," 

 and how impossible a thing " to watch them ilka time 

 they gaed out." Herd boys would gallop their horses, and 

 drive their cattle, along the path he had formed for foot 

 passengers exclusively, and when he stormed at the little 

 fellows, they would canter past, and shout out, from 

 what they deemed a safe distance, that their "horses 

 and kye had as good a right to the road as himself." 

 Worse than all the rest, when he had finished whitening 

 the walls of his pigsty, and gone in for a few minutes 

 to the house, a mischievous urchin, who had watched 

 his opportunity, sallied across the bridge, and seizing on 

 the brush, whitewashed the roof also. Independent of 

 the insult, nothing could be in worse taste ; and yet 

 when the poor man preferred his complaint to the father 

 of the urchin, the boor only deigned to murmur in reply, 

 " that folk would hae nae peace till three Lammas tides, 

 joined intil ane, would come and roll up the Clach Ma- 

 lacha" (it weighs about twenty tons), "frae its place i J 

 the sea till flood water-mark." It seemed natural to 

 infer, that a tide potent enough to roll up the Clach 

 Malacha would demolish the bulwark, and concentrate 

 the energies of Donald for at least another season. 



' But Donald found employment, and the neighbours 

 were left undisturbed to live the life of their fathers 

 without the intervention of the three Lammas tides. 

 Some of the gentlemen farmers of the parish who reared 

 fields of potatoes, which they sold out to the inhabitants 

 in square portions of a hundred yards, besought Donald 

 to superintend the measurement and the sale. The 

 office was one of no emolument whatever, but he accept- 



