Page:History of Duncan Campbell, and his dog Oscar (4).pdf/8

 8 Where is a space here which it is impossible to relate with any degree of distinctness or interest. He was a Vagabond boy, without any fixed habitation, and wan- dering about Herriot Moor, from one farm house to another, for the space of a pear; 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 O:- car, 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 hunted by the ghost of a piper ;--that piper had been murdered there many years before, in a manner somewhat mysterious, or at least unaccount- ble; and there was scarcely a night on which he was supposed either to be seen or beard about the house. Duncan slept in the cow-house, and was terribly ha- rassed 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 dis composed 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 bin repeat without any variation. "I had been driving some young cattle to the beighte of Willenslie-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, I per- ceived a light before me ;-I thought the wand in my band was all on fire, and threw it away, but I perceive ed the light glide slowly by my right foot, and burt behind me ;-I was nothing afraid, and turned abou: to look at the light, and there I saw the piper, where was standing hard at my back, and when i turnee round, he looked me in the face." What was be