Of this Johnny of course could make nothing, no more than the reader can, further than recognising in the word "Preekin" a resemblance to the name of the town he so anxiously inquired after; and he was sorely perplexed thereat. Neither could he at all comprehend what sort of a being he had fallen in with. "I dinna understan' a word o' what ye say, freen," at length said Johnny, staring hard at the stranger with open mouth. "Umph!" said the latter; and he again withdrew his pipe from his mouth, and again sent a volley of his "dutera mutteras" about Johnny's ears, to precisely the same purpose as before. Finding that it was of no use making any further attempt at conversation, Johnny passed on, not doubting that he had met either with a _dummy_ or a madman. But what was Johnny's amazement when, shortly afterwards, meeting a woman, whose dress, in its own way, was equally odd and strange with that of the person he had just left, he was answered (that is, to his queries again about Brechin), in the same gibberish in which the former had responded to him. "What can be the meanin' o' this?" said Johnny to himself, in great perplexity of mind, as he jogged on, after leaving the lady in the same unsatisfactory way as he had left the gentleman. "Whar in a' the earth can I hae gotten to, that naebody I meet wi' can understan' a word o' plain English, or can speak themsels onything like an intelligible language?" He now began to think that he had probably got into the Highlands; but, although this supposition might account for the strangeness of the language he had heard, it would not, he perceived, tally very well with the enormous breeches which the gentleman he had met with wore, and which he had seen from a distance others wearing, knowing, as he did very well, that the national dress of the Highlanders was the kilt, of which the trousers in question were the very antipodes. There was another circumstance, too, that appeared to Johnny at variance with his first conjecture, namely, that he might have got into the Highlands. Where he was there were no high lands, not an eminence the height of a mole-hill. On the contrary, the whole country, as far as his eye could reach, seemed one vast plain. Though greatly puzzled by these reflections, Johnny jogged on, and his progress at length brought him to a respectable-looking farm-house. "'Od," said Johnny, "I'll surely get a mouthfu' o' sense frae somebody here, an' fin' out whar I am."