A POET POACHER. 211 

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' children,' and participating in all their affections, presently 

 claimed for himself the care of the rising bard of Mackay ; 

 and Rob was invested with the office of boman, or head 

 cattle keeper, an employment which, at that time, carried 

 with it abundance of respect in the eyes of his fellow 

 mountaineers. 



" Rob was an inveterate deer-stalker; from earliest youth 

 it had been his delight to spend days, nights, and even 

 weeks among the wildernesses, in pursuit of his spirit- 

 stirring diversion ; and, among prouder titles to distinction, 

 his kinsmen honoured him as a marksman of the first order, 

 and a proficient in the mountain chase. In his boyish days 

 no one had ever dreamt of restraining indulgences of this 

 kind; and though now law had been added to law, and 

 regulation to regulation, ' honest theft is the spoil of the 

 wild deer' continued to be a proverb in every mouth, and 

 even the boman of Lord Reay was a constant trespasser ; 

 often had he narrowly escaped the arm of the law, and yet 

 nothing seemed capable of converting him from his darling 

 error." 



" He was more than once," says the writer of his memoirs, 

 " detected in the forbidden act, and in due time summoned 

 before the sheriff-substitute, when, in event of sufficient 

 evidence, the issue must have been banishment to the 

 Colonies, in terms of the statute. An anecdote on this 

 occasion, strongly characteristic of the bard, has been lately 

 related to us by his still surviving daughter. He set out to 

 attend the court early in the morning, attended by a neigh- 

 bour, one of his wonted hunting companions. The prospect 

 of transportation pressed heavily on his friend's spirit ; but 

 the bard remained seemingly quite tranquil. Not so his 

 wife, who, with lamentations and tears, could not be pre- 

 vented from accompanying her husband a part of the way. 

 The bard would not, even now, part with his favourite rifle, 

 but shouldered it at departing with his wonted glee. ' It 

 was,' said his daughter, in reciting this anecdote in the 

 Gaelic tongue, ' Bha gunna caol, dubh, fada, mallaicht aige,' 

 that is, a slender, black, long, wicked gun which he had. 

 They had not proceeded beyond a mile from home when 

 they came full upon a small herd of deer ; Rob was not to 



