"Me extricate! I might hae hung there till the day of judgment or I could hae helped mysell, wi' my head hinging down on the tae side, and my heels on the tother, like the yarn-scales in the weigh-house. It was the creature Dougal that extricated me, as he did yestreen; he cuttit aff the tails o' my coat wi' his durk, and another gillie and him set me on my legs as cleverly as if I had never been aff them. But to see what a thing gude braid claith is! Had I been in ony o' your rotten French camlets now, or your drab-de-berries, it would hae screeded like an auld rag wi' sic a weight as mine. But fair fa' the weaver that wrought the weft o't--I swung and bobbit yonder as safe as a gabbart* that's moored by a three-ply cable at the Broomielaw." * A kind of lighter used in the river Clyde,--probably from the French * _abare._ I now inquired what had become of his preserver. "The creature," so he continued to call the Highlandman, "contrived to let me ken there wad be danger in gaun near the leddy till he came back, and bade me stay here. I am o' the mind," he continued, "that he's seeking after you--it's a considerate creature--and troth, I wad swear he was right about the leddy, as he ca's her, too--Helen Campbell was nane o' the maist douce maidens, nor meekest wives neither, and folk say that Rob himsell stands in awe o' her. I doubt she winna ken me, for it's mony years since we met--I am clear for waiting for the Dougal creature or we gang near her." I signified my acquiescence in this reasoning; but it was not the will of fate that day that the Bailie's prudence should profit himself or any one else. Andrew Fairservice, though he had ceased to caper on the pinnacle upon the cessation of the firing, which had given occasion for his whimsical exercise, continued, as perched on the top of an exposed cliff, too conspicuous an object to escape the sharp eyes of the Highlanders, when they had time to look a little around them. We were apprized he was discovered, by a wild and loud halloo set up among the assembled victors, three or four of whom instantly plunged into the copsewood, and ascended the rocky side of the hill in different directions towards the place where they had discovered this whimsical apparition.