358 NIMROD'S NORTHERN TOUR. 



may court esteem by an imitation of exalted worth, but 1 have yet to see 

 the man who has obtained it. 



January 27, The morning was dark with a drizzling rain, when I 

 mounted the box of the Defiance coach, so sat by the side of Lambert, 

 the coachman, for the first two stages, and then drove it to Forfar, on 

 my return to Burnside. 1 liked his workmanship much (he had been 

 an old mailer, in the south it appeared), and I found he had plenty of 

 nerve so necessary on a fast coach. I had, also, an opportunity of seeing 

 his poiuers of coachmanship put to the test, for, " we boarded a cart," as 

 the sailors say, the driver of it being fast asleep, and the horses having 

 taken the wrong side of the road ; and, but for good coachmanship, we 

 should have had what is called "a case." I was, however, pleased, not 

 only with the manner in which he got his coach out of danger, but with 

 his promptness of action at the moment, which showed he was not 

 flurried. After hitting his off wheel horse very hard — and it was 

 his answering the whip as he did that saved us — he gave the carter a 

 back -bander with his double-thong across his face, that I think he 

 will remember even if he should live to be as old as my next-door neigh- 

 bour but one— a woman who saw her hundred and second birth-day ^ 

 last Christmas day^ but who never, as she says, witnessed so extra- 

 ordinary a winter as this. When I pulled up at Forfar, I found my 

 hack awaiting my arrival ; and before I mounted him, penned these words 

 in my note book. " Drove the Defiance from Kinross to Forfar. The 

 pace capital, but the road bad, Tliink whin-stone^ as it is called, a 

 better material for road-making than granite^ 



The weather being open, T commenced hunting with Mr. Dalyell, the 

 next day ; and on our arrival at the cover, was delighted at meeting a 



