SCOTTISH GAEDENS 



Thus "the old order changeth, yielding place 

 to new/' Each generation of men lives in a different 

 fashion from the last ; but the blackbird's note in 

 Dunrobin Glen the plover's pipe on Dunrobin 

 shore the scream of the eagle on Beinii Dobhrain 

 the yelp of the fox on Creag-a-ghlinne have changed 

 no whit since the Norsemen first drew up their 

 black kyuls on Golspie strand. 



Yet there is one sound which the people of 

 these glens once had good reason to recognise with 

 dread, that is no longer heard hereabouts the howl 

 of the grey wolf. It was at the very close of the 

 seventeenth century that some sheep w^ere destroyed 

 in the Glen of Loth, about half way between 

 Dunrobin and Helmsdale. At first this was believed 

 to be the work of dogs, for it was supposed that 

 the last of the wolves had been killed two or three 

 years before in Assynt and Halladale. But an old 

 hunter named Poison, living at Wester Helmsdale, 

 recognising the real character of the culprits, set 

 out with his son and a herd laddie to explore the 

 recesses of Glen Loth. This is a place of many 

 memories, for here, where the Sletdale burn joins 

 the Loth, are the standing stones of Carrickachlich, 

 Cairnbran, where Fingal's good dog Bran lies buried, 

 and the holy well of Tobermassan. In the ravine of 

 Sletdale Poison found his quest in the shape of a 

 rift in the rocks, with the ground well trodden into a 

 track leading into it. The fissure widened inwards, 

 but was too narrow to admit a full-grown man ; so, 



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