THE STORY OF HANNAH LAMOND. 



the piety of his thankful creatures. The great Golden 

 Eagle, the pride and the pest of the parish, stooped 

 down, and away with something in his talons. One 

 single, sudden female shriek and then shouts and out- 

 cries as if a church-spire had tumbled down on a con- 

 gregation at a sacrament ! ' Hannah Lamond's bairn ! 

 Hannah Lamond's bairn ! ' was the loud, fast-spreading 

 cry. ' The eagle 's ta'en aff Hannah Lamond's bairn ! ' 

 and many hundred feet were in another instant hurrying 

 towards the mountain. Two miles of hill, and dale, and 

 copse, and shingle, and many intersecting brooks lay 

 between ; but in an incredibly short time, the foot of 

 the mountain was alive with people. The eyrie was 

 well-known, and both old birds were visible on the 

 rock-ledge. But who shall scale that dizzy cliff, which 

 Mark Steuart the sailor, who had been at the storming 

 of many a fort, attempted in vain ? All kept gazing, 

 weeping, wringing of hands in vain, rooted to the 

 ground, or running back and forwards, like so many 

 ants essaying their new wings in discomfiture. * What 's 

 the. use what's the use o' ony puir human means? 

 We have no power but in prayer!' and many knelt 

 down fathers and mothers, thinking of their own 

 babies, as if they would force the deaf heavens to 

 hear ! 



" Hannah Lamond had all this while been sitting on 

 a rock, with a face perfectly white, and eyes like those 

 of a mad person, fixed on the eyrie. Nobody had 

 noticed her ; for strong as all sympathies with her had 

 been at the swoop of the eagle, they were now swal- 

 lowed up in the agony of eyesight. * Only last Sabbath 

 was my sweet wee wean baptized :' and on uttering these 



