LIFE AT KOSEHALL. 41 



and sheep comparatively few to what they are in the present 

 day. 



Before the earliest grouse-cock had shaken his plumage and 

 called his mate from her heather couch, I had left my sleep- 

 ing-place in the building that did duty for a barn, where deep in 

 the straw, and wrapped in my plaid, I had slept sound as a deer- 

 stalker, and I fancy no person sleeps more soundly. I had 

 preferred going to roost in the clean straw to passing the night 

 within the house, knowing by former experience that Malcolm's 

 shealing was tenanted by myriads of nocturnal insects, which, like 

 the ancient Britons, " feri hospitibus," would have left me but 

 little quiet during the night. The last time I had slept there, 

 all the fleas in the shealing, " novitatis avidi," had issued out and 

 fallen on the body of the unlucky stranger. Tempted by the 

 clean and fresh appearance of the good lady's sheets, I had trusted 

 my tired limbs to their snowy whiteness, when, sallying forth from 

 every crevice arid every corner, the legion of insects had hopped 

 on me to enjoy the treat of a supper of English blood. The 

 natives of these places seem quite callous to everything of the 

 kind. 



To continue, however. After making good use of the burn 

 that rippled along within fifty yards of the house, and having 

 eaten a most alarming quantity of the composition called porridge, 

 I sallied forth alone. Malcolm and his brother would fain have 

 accompanied me, but the latter had to attend some gathering of 

 sheep in a different direction, and Malcolm was obliged to go 

 for the stag killed yesterday. He therefore only walked a few 

 hundred yards up the first hill with me, in order to impress well 

 on my recollection the different glens and burns he wished me to 

 look at on my way to the place of rendezvous with old Donald. 

 The sun was but a little distance above the horizon when I gained 

 the summit of a tolerably long and steep ascent immediately 

 behind Malcolm's house. A blackcock or two rose wild from 

 some cairn of stones or hillock, where they had been enjoying 

 the earliest rays of the sun, and flew back over my head to take 

 shelter in the scattered birch thickets near the shealing ; and 



