n 4 FAMOUS SCOTS 



up the passage. Then they learned that, though it was 

 fifteen years since last he had seen the book, he had 

 repeated page after page verbatim. 



The year 1856 was one remarkable for garotte 

 robberies. This awakened in the overtaxed brain of 

 Miller a fear for his museum of geological specimens 

 which he had housed for himself at Shrub Mount, 

 Portobello. The last four years of his life he had 

 spent there, and often he would leave the house and 

 return late in the evening after hours of investigation 

 of the coast line and geological features of Leith and 

 the surrounding country. He knew his Edinburgh 

 thoroughly ; some of his happiest papers are to be read 

 in his Edinburgh and its Neighbourhood; and it was after 

 one of these excursions that Sir Archibald Geikie had 

 seen him, as he describes in the reminiscence to be 

 found in the last pages of this work. The fear of 

 burglars had taken hold firmly of his imagination, and 

 he resumed the habit of bearing fire-arms which he had 

 begun at Cromarty when carrying the money of the 

 bank between that town and Tain. The inflammation 

 of the lungs in his early days as a mason had again at 

 intervals returned, and his sleep was broken by dreams 

 of such a harassing nature that he would wake in the 

 morning to examine his clothes, in the belief that he 

 was now the victim of evil spirits. In such a condition 

 it was not unnatural that his mind should take a colour 

 from other days, where the reader may remember his 

 own account of seeing the figure at the door after his 



