A SUMMER RAMBLE AMONG THE HEBRIDES. 165 



the same fate, through the influence of the one cause, which 

 has been experienced by the sepulchral tumulus and the an- 

 cient encampment under the operations of the other. I saw 

 in the pillars and archways of the farm-steading some of the 

 hewn stones bearing my own mark, an anchor, to which I 

 used to attach a certain symbolical meaning ; and I pointed 

 them out to the ploughman. I had hewn these stones, I said, 

 in the days of the old laird, the grandfather of the present 

 proprietor. The ploughman wondered how a man still in 

 middle life could have such a story to tell. I must surely 

 have begun work early in the day, he remarked, which was 

 perhaps the best way for getting it soon over. I remembered 

 having seen similar markings on the hewn-work of ancient 

 castles, and of indulging in, I daresay, idle enough specula- 

 tions regarding what was doing at court and in the field, in 

 Scotland and elsewhere, when the old long-departed mecha- 

 nics had been engaged in their work. When this mark was 

 affixed, I have said, all Scotland was in mourning for the 

 disaster at Flodden, and the folk in the work-shed would have 

 been, mayhap, engaged in discussing the supposed treachery 

 of Home, and in arguing whether the hapless James had fallen 

 in battle, or gone on a pilgrimage to merit absolution for the 

 death of his father. And when this other more modern mark 

 was affixed, the Gowrie conspiracy must have been the topic 

 of the day, and the mechanics were probably speculating, 

 at worst not more doubtfully than the historians have done 

 after them, on the guilt or innocence of the Ruthvens. It 

 now rose curiously enough in memory, that I was employed 

 in fashioning one of the stones marked by the anchor, a 

 corner stone in a gate-pillar, when one of my brother-ap- 

 prentices entered the work-shed, laden with a bundle of newly- 

 sharpened irons from the smithy, and said he had just been 

 told by the smith that the great Napoleon Bonaparte was 

 dead. I returned to the village of Conon Bridge, through 



