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CHAPTER II. 



GAI11LOCH LETTERS DESCRIPTIVE OF HIS JOURNEY FROM 

 CONON-SIDE AND OF GAIRLOCH SCENERY LOVE-POETRY 

 THE CARTER OLD JOHN FRASER A DREAM MAGNANIMOUS 

 REVENGE GAIRLOCH LANDSCAPES BACK TO CROMARTY. 



ABOUT midsummer work turns up, and Hugh starts 

 again for Conon-side, whence he is ordered to Gair- 

 loch on the western coast of Ross-shire. A month after 

 his arrival he is confined to his barrack with a crushed 

 foot, and takes his pen to write to a friend in Cromarty. 

 There is one letter complete, and part of another. Read- 

 ers will, perhaps, like to have these compositions as they 

 came from the pen of Miller in his twenty-first year. 



'Gairlocly July, 1823. 



' You may expect a very long letter. I was so un- 

 lucky, two days ago, as to get my left foot crushed in a 

 quarry by a huge stone, and I am now completely chained 

 to my seat. My comrades are all out at work, I have 

 no books, and the hours pass away heavily 'enough; but 

 I have just set myself to try whether I cannot beguile 

 them by conversing with you. You are sitting before 

 me on a large smooth stone, the only spare seat in the 

 barrack (my own for I love to sit soft I have cush- 

 ioned with a sod), and I have to tell you a long gossiping 



