358 RAMBLES OF A GEOLOGIST. 



patches on the gray tomb-stones and the graves. The ruinous 

 little chapel in the corner, whose walls a quarter of a century 

 before I had distinctly traced, had sunk into a green mound ; 

 and there remained over the sward but the arch-stone of a 

 Gothic window, with a portion of the moulded transom at- 

 tached, to indicate the character and style of the vanished 

 building. The old dial-stone, with the wasted gnomon, has 

 also disappeared ; and the few bright-coloured throch-stanes, 

 raw from the chisel, that had been added of late years to the 

 group of older standing, did not quite make up for what time 

 in the same period had withdrawn. One of the newer in- 

 scriptions, however, recorded a curious fact. When I had 

 resided in this part of the country so long before, there was 

 an aged couple in the neighbourhood, who had lived together, 

 it was said, as man and wife for more than sixty years ; and 

 now, here was their tombstone and epitaph. They had lived 

 on long after my departure ; and when, as the seasons passed, 

 men and women whose births and baptisms had taken place 

 since their wedding-day were falling around them well stricken 

 in years, death seemed to have forgotten them; and when 

 he came at last, their united ages made up well nigh two 

 centuries. The wife had seen her ninety-sixth and the hus- 

 band his hundred and second birth-day. It does not trans- 

 cend the skill of the actuary to say how many thousand 

 women must die under ninety-six for every one that reaches 

 it, and how many tens of thousands of men must die under 

 a hundred and two for every man who attains to an age so 

 extraordinary ; but he would require to get beyond his tables 

 in order to reckon up the chances against the woman destined 

 to attain to ninety-six being courted and married in early life 

 by the man born to attain to a hundred and two. 



After enjoying a magnificent sunset on the banks of the 

 Conon, just where the scenery, exquisite throughout, is most 

 delightful, I returned through the woods, and spent half an 



