RED EACHAN THE HUNTER.

A LEGEND OF GLENCOE.

[James Baillie Fraser, born at Reelig, Inverness-shire, 1784; died 1856. Although he has left a considerable number of stories to preserve his memory, it was as an

Eastern traveller, and as an agreeable narrator of all the strange sights and customs he observed in the course of many years' wanderings, that he was best known during his life. His principal works were: "A Tour through the Snowy Range of the Himala Mountains (published at twenty guineas); A Journey into Khorasan; Travels in the Persian Provinces: Kuzzubash; a tale of Khorasan; The Khan's Tale; A Winter Journey from Constantinople to Tehran: The History of Persia; &c. Besides the tales mentioned he also wrote: The Highland Smugglers; Alice Neemroo; Dark Falcon; &c. His books of travel were acknowledged to be amongst the best of

their kind, and scarcely to be surpassed “in lively delineations, and rapid but graphic sketches." The author was also said to be "equally remarkable for the extent of his good humour and the depth of his information."]

It is some years since, in the progress of a tour, through part of the Western Highlands of Scotland, which I made in company with a friend, we visited the singularly romantic and well-known valley of Glencoe, and were forced to take shelter from a very threatening night, in the comfortless and miserable inn at the head of that glen.

The night fulfilled its threats to the uttermost, being howling and tempestuous; but, as if the ill-humour of the weather had exhausted itself in blustering, the following morning was fine, and the sun, rising in a bright and cloudless sky, made even the black and rugged hills around us smile under the cheering influence of his beams. It was a lovely and a smiling season; and, desirous to take advantage of it, not only to explore the picturesque and savage beauties of the glen, but to examine the localities and trace the scenes of that bloody national, tragedy of which it had been once made the theatre, I made known my wishes to the landlord of our lowly hospitium, and besought him to supply us with a guide, qualified to point out the places which have been so fearfully signalized.

Mine host, a sheep-farmer as well as an innkeeper to his trade, had already assumed his gray checkered plaid, and with a stout oaken plant in his hand, was about to stalk off to one of the adjacent hills, upon some matter connected with the sheep-shearing, when this application was made. Casting a somewhat impatient glance upon us, from a keen gray eye, deep-set among a thousand wrinkles, he regretted, in good English, though in Highland

accent, "that all his laads were off to the hill, and that not one of them was nearer than three miles, even if they could be spared from the sheep; as for himself, he was for the big Bochall, at the top of Glen Etive, and wud na be back till night; the wife and the bit lassie was a' that wud be left in the house.-But the gentlemen needna be at a loss: there was old Allister Dhu,-they would find him at his little bothy, no four miles down the glen-or close by it surely-he was the only man to show the glen-proud was Allister of every gray stone and black rock in it—and as for stories about them, he had more than all the Sheanachies in the country-when he was in the humour."

This last was a species of reservation which needed to be explained; and the landlord, who evidently wished to get rid of the detention we were occasioning to him, merely said, that old Allister was at times something crabbed, and when he took a notion in his head that the gentlefolks were laughing at him, he would grow sulky and silent, and maybe turn his back and be off from them altogether. This was a conclusion which we resolved to avoid, by treating the old Highlander with due respect, and I had private hopes of mollifying the acerbities of his temper in which I trusted mightily; so, although we might have preferred a secure guide from the inn, and could not avoid looking a little blank upon our host when he intimated the impossibility of supplying us, we became reconciled to our disappointment, and with curiosity somewhat excited by this account of old Allister, we mounted our Highland ponies, and proceeded down the glen, according to the directions we had received.

The day kept up, as days seldom do in the proverbially moist climate of the West Highlands; and although clouds did occasionally curl round the rugged brows of the sharp and lofty crags on either side, and throw a darker shade over the narrow and naturally gloomy valley, the breeze was always sufficient to dispel them ere they broke in rain; and they served but to vary the splendid mountain scenery, by the magical effect of their flitting shadows, without making us pay for our pleasure by a drenching.

The four miles of our friend, mine host, proved somewhat of the longest, as Highland miles seldom fail to do; for it took us an hour's smart riding to bring us to the habitation of our proposed guide. The stream, collected from the peat-bogs and moss-cracks, in the moor, at the head of the glen, and swelled by numerous rills oozing from the surrounding