494 Ifcfnss of tbe 1Rot>, IRffle, ant> Gun 



and fell fast asleep in the very middle of the uproar. 

 Hogg fiddled and the company danced till four in the 

 morning, when a great ' skailing ' took place in the 

 daylight, and the weary Shepherd rolled into the empty 

 press-bed in the kitchen. But he could not sleep for 

 excitement and thirst, and in the morning his room- 

 fellows were wakened by his shouts for water. He had 

 emptied both jugs in the kitchen, and was bawling, 

 * Tibbie, wuman ! watter's terrible scarce wi' ye ; can ye 

 no fetch in the loch ? ' " 



It was whilst he was on a fishing tour in the year 1836, 

 being then six-and-twenty years of age, that there came 

 to Thomas Tod Stoddart the one romance of his life a 

 romance which bears a strong resemblance to that of 

 the hero of Clough's " Bothie of Tober-na-Vuolich." He 

 had fished Badenoch and the valley of the Spey, had 

 wandered from Inverness to Dingwall, and thence to the 

 chain of lochs north of Strath-peffer, when his fate met 

 him at Contin. Miss Stoddart tells the story so charm- 

 ingly that it would spoil it to give it in any words but 

 her own : 



" Early in July, he made his way by the Strath to 

 Contin, where a comfortable-looking farmhouse by the 

 roadside offered rest and accommodation to travellers. 

 Opposite the house, and across the road was a garden 

 gay with flowers, and beyond the garden stretched a 

 stately pine-wood. He had crossed a bridge over the 

 Rasay, and knew that a mile farther on lay Loch Achilty, 

 with its pine-clad tor, and farther west still Lochs Garve 

 and Linchart, with their feeders and effluents, and the 

 numerous lily-bordered lochlets in their neighbourhood. 



