A POET-POACHER. 271 



"Kob was an inveterate deer-stalker: from earliest 

 youth it had been his delight to spend days, nights, and 

 even weeks among the wildernesses, in pursuit of this 

 spirit-stirring diversion ; and, among prouder titles to 

 distinction, his kinsmen honoured him as a marksman of 

 the first order, and a proficient in the mountain chase. 

 In his boyish days no one had ever dreamt of restraining 

 indulgences of this kind ; and though now law had been 

 added to law, and regulation to regulation, ' honest theft 

 is the spoil of the wild deer ' continued to be a proverb in 

 every mouth, and even the boman of Lord Ileay was a 

 constant trespasser ; often had he narrowly escaped the 

 arm of the law, and yet nothing seemed capable of con- 

 verting him from his darling error." 



" He was more than once," says the writer of his 

 memoirs, " detected in the forbidden act, and in due time 

 summoned before the sheriff-substitute, when, in event of 

 sufficient evidence, the issue must have been banishment to 

 the colonies, in terms of the statute. An anecdote on this 

 occasion, strongly characteristic of the bard, has been lately 

 related to us by his still surviving daughter. He set out to 

 attend the court early in the morning, attended by a 

 neighbour, one of his wonted hunting companions. The 

 prospect of transportation pressed heavily on his friend's 

 spirit; but the bard remained seemingly quite tranquil. 

 Not so his wife, who, with lamentations and tears, could 

 not be prevented from accompanying her husband a part 

 of the way. The bard would not, even now, part with 

 his favourite rifle, but shouldered it at departing with his 

 wonted glee. ' It was,' said his daughter, in reciting this 

 anecdote in the Gaelic tongue, <Bha gunna caol, dubh, 



