There are two roads which run between Cromarty and Fortrose; the one, the king's highway; the other, a narrow footpath that goes winding for several miles under the immense wall of cliffs which overhangs the northern shores of the Moray Frith, and then ascends to the top, by narrow and doubtful traverses along the face of an immense precipice, termed the Scarf's Crag. The latter route is by far the more direct and more pleasant of the two to the day traveller; but the man should think twice who proposes taking it by night. The Scarf's Crag has been a scene of frightful accidents for the last two centuries. It is not yet more than twelve years since a young and very active man was precipitated from one of its higher ledges to the very beach--a sheer descent of nearly two hundred feet; and a multitude of little cairns which mottle the sandy platform below, bear witness to the no unfrequent occurrence of such casualties in the remote past. With the knowledge of all this, however, I had determined on taking the more perilous road: it is fully two miles shorter than the other; and besides, in a life of undisturbed security, a slight admixture of that feeling which the sense of danger awakens, is a luxury which I have always deemed worth one's while running some little risk to procure. The night fell thick and dark while I was yet hurrying along the footway which leads under the cliffs, and, on reaching the Scarf's Crag, I could no longer distinguish the path, nor even catch the huge outline of the precipice between me and the sky. I knew that the moon rose a little after nine; but it was still early in the evening, and, deeming it too long to wait its rising, I set myself to grope for the path, when, on turning an abrupt angle, I was dazzled by a sudden blaze of light from an opening in the rock. A large fire of furze and brushwood blazed merrily from the interior of a low-browed but spacious cave, bronzing with dusky yellow the huge volume of smoke, which went rolling outwards along the roof, and falling red and strong on the face and hands of a thickset, determined-looking man, well nigh in his sixtieth year, who was seated before it on a block of stone. I knew him at once, as an intelligent, and, in the main, rather respectable gipsy, whom I had once met with, about ten years before, and who had seen some service as a soldier, it was said, in the first British expedition to Egypt. The sight of his fire determined me at once. I resolved on passing the evening with him till the rising of the moon; and, after a brief explanation, and a blunt, though by no means unkind invitation to a place beside his fire, I took my seat, fronting him, on a block of granite, which had been rolled from the neighbouring beach. In less than half-an-hour, we were on as easy terms as if we had been comrades for years, and, after beating over fifty different topics, he told me the story of his life, and found an attentive and interested auditor.