country tongue sounding quick and sharp in the ears of Morag, or Mary, a clever, well-made, bare-footed, and short-gowned Highland lass, with pleasing countenance, largish cheek bones, black snooded hair, sparkling eyes, arched eyebrows, and rosy cheeks, busied in washing out her milk cogues, with her coats kilted up to her knees. To which add the herd of cows, oxen, queys, stirks, and calves of all sorts and sizes, with a due mixture of sheep and lambs, and pownys, sprinkled all about, feeding among the whinny pasture-hillocks and baulks, dividing the queer-shaped patches of the surrounding arable land.--Above all, I would have you particularly to remark a vurra large sow-beast, with a numerous litter of pigs, grubbing up the ground about the old killogie, amid the ruins of which her progeny first saw the light. In addition thereto, fancy, in the words of our own Scottish pastoral poet, Allan Ramsay, that "Hens on the midden, ducks in dubbs are seen," and you will be in full possession of the first scene of my tale, as well as acquainted with some of its more important dramatis personae. Mr. MacArthur, the farmer, though a Highlander, was a stanch Whig, which made him, as you may well suppose, gentlemen, rather a "Rara avis in terris, nigroque simillima cygno" among his brother Celts. He had acquired his principles during his residence in England, where he had fallen in with and married his wife, who was a woman of good condition for her rank of life, and of superior yeddication. She was attached to the Hanoverian royal family, both by principle and interest. Her brother was an officer in the Royal Regiment; and as everything connected with England was dear to her, because it was her country, so every thing connected with the English army was especially dear to her on her brother's account.