stand, it imparted by its solid reality a degree of authenticity to the story in this part of the country, which, if unfurnished with a "local habitation," as in Sir Walter's note, it would have wanted. Such was one of the many stories of the Conon with which I became acquainted at a time when the beliefs they exemplified were by no means quite dead, and of which I could think as tolerably serious realities, when, lying a-bed all alone at midnight, the solitary inmate of a dreary barrack, listening to the roar of the Conon. Besides the long evenings, we had an hour to breakfast, and another to dinner. Much of the breakfast hour was spent in cooking our food; but as a bit of oaten cake and a draught of milk usually served us for the mid-day meal, the greater part of the hour assigned to _it_ was available for purposes of rest or amusement. And when the day was fine, I used to spend it by the side of a mossy stream, within a few minutes' walk of the work-shed, or in a neighbouring planting, beside a little irregular lochan, fringed round with flags and rushes. The mossy stream, black in its deeper pools, as if it were a rivulet of tar, contained a good many trout, which had acquired a hue nearly as deep as its own, and formed the very negroes of their race. They were usually of small size--for the stream itself was small; and, though little countries sometimes produce great men, little streams rarely produce great fish. But on one occasion, towards the close of autumn, when a party of the younger workmen set themselves, in a frolic, to sweep it with torch and spear, they succeeded in capturing, in a dark alder-o'ershaded pool, a monstrous individual, nearly three feet in length, and proportionally bulky, with a snout bent over the lower jaw at its symphysis, like the beak of a hawk, and as deeply tinged (though with more of brown in its complexion) as the blackest coal-fish I ever saw. It must have been a bull-trout, a visitor from the neighbouring river; but we all concluded at the time, from the extreme dinginess of its coat, that it had lived for years in its dark pool, a hermit apart from its fellows. I am not now, however, altogether certain that the inference was a sound one. Some fishes, like some men, have a wonderful ability of assuming the colours that best suit their interests for the time. I have been unable to determine whether the trout be one of these conformists; but it used to strike me at this period as at least curious, that the fishes in even the lower reaches of the dark little rivulet should differ so entirely in hue from those of the greatly clearer Conon, into which its peaty waters fall, and whose scaly denizens are of silvery brightness. No fish seems to possess a more complete power over its dingy coat than a very abundant one in the estuary of the Conon--the common flounder. Standing on the bank, I have startled these creatures from off the patch of