RAMBLES OF A GEOLOGIST. 359 



hour by the way in the cottage of a kindly-hearted woman, 

 now considerably advanced in years, whom I had known, 

 when she was in middle life, as the wife of one of the Conon- 

 side hinds, and who not unfrequently, when I was toiling 

 at the mallet in the burning sun, hot and thirsty, and rather 

 loosely knit for my work, had brought me all she had to 

 offer at the time a draught of fresh whey. At first she 

 seemed to have wholly forgotten both her kindness and the 

 object of it. She well remembered my master, and another 

 Cromarty man who had been grievously injured, when un- 

 dermining an old building, by the sudden fall of the erection ; 

 but she could bethink her of no third Cromarty man what- 

 ever. " Eh, sirs !" she at length exclaimed, " I daresay ye'll 

 be just the sma' prentice laddie. Weel, what will young 

 folk no come out o' ? They were amaist a' stout big men at 

 the wark except yoursel' ; an' you're now stouter and bigger 

 than maist o' them. Eh, sirs ! an' are ye still a mason V 

 " No ; I have not wrought as a mason for the last fourteen 

 years ; but I have to work hard enough for all that" " Weel, 

 weel, its our appointed lot; an' if we have but health an' 

 strength, an' the wark to do, why should we repine T Once 

 fairly entered on our talk together, we gossipped on till the 

 night fell, giving and receiving information regarding our 

 old acquaintances of a quarter of a century before ; of whom 

 we found that no inconsiderable proportion had already sunk 

 in the stream in which eventually we must all disappear. 

 And then, taking leave of the kindly old woman, I walked 

 on in the dark to Dingwall, where I spent the night I 

 could fain have called by the way on my old friend and bro- 

 ther-workman, Mr TJrquhart, of a very numerous party of 

 mechanics employed at Conon-side in the year 1821 the only 

 individual now resident in this part of the country ; but the 

 lateness of the hour forbade. Next morning I returned by 

 the Conon road, as far as the noble bridge which strides across 



