mortal hand, to a wondrous pavement that stretched far beneath the dolesome deep, and these steps were called Scott's stair. On the summits of this gigantic crag was an irregular footpath, which the sheep traversed oftener than did human foot. A fortnight passed away in many fruitless attempts to find the lost laird, when Donald Orr, coming one morning along the summits of these rocks, saw something floating on a part of the loch that was not frozen, but at a greater distance from Michael Scott's stair than he could reach with his stick; and being now very old and frail, he could not get into the water as he was wont in his younger days, and bring it out, even if the loch had been of immeasurable depth; and his suspicions being roused by observing some corbies hovering o'er this floating matter, the old man hied away to the first cotter's house of the baron of Ambrisbeg's people, and brought them to the loch; and, contrary to the usual custom of Scottish youngsters, who are very superstitious on such occasions, one of the boys, who was an excellent swimmer, did not give his father time to get ropes and poles to the spot to drag it on the steps. The little fellow had his coat, waistcoat, and hat off in an instant, and plunged into the water with the most undaunted spirit and swam to the object. Raising both his hands, he supported his perpendicular position in the water by that motion of the legs which is called treading: he examined; "It's himself! it's the laird! Mither, it's St. Clyde !"-and, dropping horizontally again on his bosom into the water, with one hand he seized the cape of the drowned man's coat, and rowed himself, with the other, towing the corpse till he came to Michael Scott's stairs. The horror of the spectators was indescribable. The corpse had not floated till its substances began to dissolve, and putrefaction had begun her mangled feast. Old Donald Orr narrowly looked at the Laird St. Clyde's head and neck, and discovered a piece of very stout whipcord sunk far below the surface of the neck: nobody would touch this cord. The body was decently laid on a clean sheet, which the boy who brought it ashore had by this time "brought from his mither's kist." The father, the boy, and two little girls, went, one to the minister, another to his lordship's agent, and a third to the magistrate's in the town, and the fourth to St. Clyde's. It was the father, who went to the house of woe. Levingstone, the minister, the factor, and the baillie Ilan Dou, arrived about the same time; and there was a cart on the shore, to convey away the mutilated corpse. There was no coroner's inquest held on the body. not a coroner in all Scotland. There is But be fore the corpse was stirred, the doctor had come, and he removed the cord from St. Clyde's neck: this cord the baillie, throwing the snuff out of his box, carefully put into it; and "the box he had received many years before from the man whom its present contents had strangled." There were no marks of violence could be discovered on the body, except on one knee; and the putrid state that limb was in, did not justify the skilful doctor giving an opinion: the cord was enough. The corpse was |