84 NETHER LOCHABER. 



safety as anxiously as if it contained the wealth of the Rothschilds 

 in Bank of England notes, or the title-deeds of an earldom. 

 When at last produced at home, and displayed before the admiring 

 gaze of a select few in every imaginable angle of light, it was 

 really a very fine nightcap, a sort of ribbed magenta-coloured 

 " Kilmarnock," with a tassel at top, in which were intermingled all 

 the hues of the rainbow, such a splendid tassel as was never before 

 seen in Lochaber : Cardinal Antonelli might have been proud of it 

 as a pendant to his hat. Having at last been sufficiently admired, 

 the nightcap was duly put to its proper use, and was found to 

 answer its purpose perfectly ; but one night, while yet the gay 

 Kilmarnock retained almost all its pristine bloom, lo ! it was 

 amissing at bedtime from its usual place of honour on the corner 

 of its owner's pillow, greatly to his annoyance you may "believe, 

 and not a little to the surprise and consternation of his amiable 

 bedfellow. Then, and for weeks afterwards, all search for the 

 missing nightcap was but so much fruitless labour ; nothing could 

 be seen or heard of it, and it was finally agreed on all hands that 

 it must have been stolen by some person whose honesty became 

 weak as water in view of the Kilmarnock's rare magenta colour 

 and gay pendulous tassel. And the nightcap in very truth was 

 stolen, though the thief was probably actuated less by the brilliancy 

 of its colours than the cozy feel of its soft and silken texture. 

 Some time in mid-autumn the mystery was cleared up in this wise. 

 The nightcap owner was one day engaged in redding up his barn 

 preparatory to the ingathering of his crops, when a large rat bolted 

 from between his feet, and, scuttling across the floor, disappeared, 

 rat fashion, in a hole in the divot wall. A spade was instantly 

 got, and the hole dug about until its innermost recess was reached, 

 in which was found a gigantic dam rat with a litter of a dozen or 

 more young ones. These were all of them of course straight- 

 way despatched, and the cozy nest of moss, dried grass, and nibbled 



