"But a mystery hung ower that lad's death that was never cleared up, nor ever will a'thegither. Every man was convinced, in his own mind, that Linton knew where the body was a' the time; and also, that the young man had not come by his death fairly. It was proved that the lad's dog had come hame several times, and that Tam Linton had been seen kicking it frae about his house; and as the dog could be nowhere all that time, but waiting on the body, if that had no been concealed in some more than ordinary way, the dog would at least have been seen. At length, it was suggested to the old man, that dead-lights always hovered over a corpse by night, if the body was left exposed to the air; and it was a fact that two drowned men had been found in a field of whins, where the water had left the bodies, by means of the dead-lights, a very short while before. On the first calm night, therefore, the old desolate man went to the Merk-Side-Edge, to the top of a high hill that overlooked all the ground where there was ony likelihood that the body would be lying. He watched there the lee-lang night, keeping his eye constantly roaming ower the broken wastes before him; but he never noticed the least glimmer of the dead-lights. About midnight, however, he heard a dog barking; it likewise gae twa or three melancholy yowls, and then ceased. Robin Dodds was convinced it was his son's dog; but it was at such a distance, being about twa miles off, that he couldna be sure where it was, or which o' the hills on the opposite side of the glen it was on. The second night he kept watch on the Path Know, a hill which he supposed the howling o' the dog cam frae. But that hill being all surrounded to the west and north by tremendous ravines and cataracts, he heard nothing o' the dog. In the course of the night, however, he saw, or fancied he saw, a momentary glimmer o' light, in the depth of the great gulf immediately below where he sat; and that at three different times, always in the same place. He now became convinced that the remains o' his son were in the bottom of the linn, a place which he conceived inaccessible to man; it being so deep from the summit where he stood, that the roar o' the waterfall only reached his ears now and then wi' a loud _whush!_ as if it had been a sound wandering across the hills by itsell. But sae intent was Robin on this Willie-an-the-wisp light, that he took landmarks frae the ae summit to the other, to make sure o' the place; and as soon as daylight came, he set about finding a passage down to the bottom of the linn. He effected this by coming to the foot of the linn, and tracing its course backward, sometimes wading in water, and sometimes clambering over rocks, till at length, with a beating heart, he reached the very spot where he had seen the light; and in the grey o' the morning, he perceived something lying there that differed in colour from the iron-hued stones, and rocks, of which the linn was composed.