the Highlanders--The Highlanders, and other Poems, etc.] and my friend, General Stewart of Garth, [The gallant and amiable author of the History of the Highland Regiments, in whose glorious services his own share had been great, went out Governor of St Lucia in 1828, and died in that island on the 18th of December 1829,--no man more regretted, or perhaps by a wider circle of friends and acquaintance.] in giving the real history of the Highland regiments, has rendered any attempt to fill up the sketch with fancy-colouring extremely rash and precarious. Yet I, too, have still a lingering fancy to add a stone to the cairn; and without calling in imagination to aid the impressions of juvenile recollection, I may just attempt to embody one or two scenes illustrative of the Highland character, and which belong peculiarly to the Chronicles of the Canongate, to the grey-headed eld of whom they are as familiar as to Chrystal Croftangry. Yet I will not go back to the days of clanship and claymores. Have at you, gentle reader, with a tale of Two Drovers. An oyster may be crossed in love, says the gentle Tilburina--and a drover may be touched on a point of honour, says the Chronicler of the Canongate. ***** THE TWO DROVERS. CHAPTER I. It was the day after Doune Fair when my story commences. It had been a brisk market. Several dealers had attended from the northern and midland counties in England, and English money had flown so merrily about as to gladden the hearts of the Highland farmers. Many large droves were about to set off for England, under the protection of their owners, or of the topsmen whom they employed in the tedious, laborious, and responsible office of driving the cattle for many hundred miles, from the market where they had been purchased, to the fields or farmyards where they were to be fattened for the shambles.