Page:History of Duncan Campbell, and his dog Oscar (1).pdf/8

 there is a space here which it is impossible to relate any degree or distinctness or interest. He was a vagabond boy, without any fixed habitation, and wandered about Herriot Moor; from one farm-house to another, for the space of a year'; staying from one to twenty nights in each house, according as he found the people kind to him. He seldom resented any indignity, offered to himself, but whoever insulted Oscar, or offered any observations on the impropriety of their friendship, lost Duncan's company next morning. He staid several months at a place called Dewar, which he said was haunted by the ghost of a piper;— that piper had been murdered there many years before, in a manner somewhat mysterious, or at least unaccountable; and there was scarcely a night on which he was supposed either to be seen or heard about the house. Duncan slept in the cow-house, and was terribly harrassed by the piper; he often heard him scratching about the rafters, and sometimes he would groan, like a man dying, or a cow that was choaked in the band; but at length he saw him at his side one night, which so discomposed him that he was obliged to leave the place, after being ill for many days. I shall give this story in Duncan's own words, which I have often heard him repeat without any variation.

“I had been driving some young cattle to the heights of Willenslee—it grew late before I got home.—I was thinking, and thinking, how cruel it was to kill the poor piper! to cut out his tongue, and stab him in the back. I thought it was no wonder that his ghost took it extremely ill; when, all on a sudden, perceived a light before me;—I thought the wand in my hand was all on fire, and threw it away, but I perceived the light glide slowly by my right foot, and burn behind me:—I was nothing afraid, and turned about to took at the light, there I saw the piper, who was standing hard at my back, and when I turned round, he looked me in the face.” “What was he