He fell; the timber floated over him, and he again rose; but he was in much deeper water, and manifestly apprehended danger. He screamed aloud, and we rushed forward--his brother Stephen and I--to the rescue; but we were all instantly hurled along into a deep and whirling pool. Over the banks of this eddy there grew and hung a broom bush; more by accident than management, I got a hold of it. Stephen was struggling near me, and I caught him with the other hand. I struggled desperately, and got myself and my companion into the face of a soft and clay brow. I held like grim death, and at last surmounted the steep. Though stupified, I saw that one was awanting, and I rushed--for Stephen was insensible--along the brink of the pool. At the foot of it, and where the water began to shallow, I saw poor Richard tumbling over without any signs of life. In an instant I had a hold of his garment, and had actually pulled him considerably to one side, when, my feet coming in contact with a large stone, I fell backwards, lost my hold, and the body of poor Richard was found, next day, a mile and a-half below, at the bottom of Porter's Hole. On the opposite side of this churchyard there is a flat flagstone, with the following inscription--"Here lie the mortal remains of William Herdman, weaver in Auldwa's of Gilchristland." Poor Willie Herdman! What associations do not these two magic words awaken! When Gibraltar stood nobly out, under the command of an Elliot, against the combined strength of France and Spain, thou wast there to send the hissing-hot cannon-balls into the hulls of the enemy's floating-batteries. But, on returning to thy native Nottingham, to taste of its pure and salubrious ales, thy house was desolate--father, mother, and sister, all dead--and the place which knew them owned another tenant. Thy heart sank within thee; and having been bred a weaver in thy youth, thou didst take the road for Glasgow; but, at Brownhill, chance brought thee acquainted with Archy Tait of Auldwa's, and with him didst thou ply thy trade till the mournful end of thy days. But it was neither as a soldier, nor as a weaver, that I remember thee with so much interest. It was as the best bait-fisher in the south of Scotland--it was as my first preceptor in that most delightful art. I see thee still, before sunrise, ten miles amidst the mountains, and I hear the plash of the large new-run sea-trout, as it "turns up its silver scaling to the light" amidst the dark-brown flood. At all times, and almost in all states of the weather and the water, thy skill was triumphant, and from thee I derived that art which no man knows, unless instructed by me, to this hour--the art of fishing _up_, and not _down_, a mountain stream, with prepared bait. But the hour of thy destiny at last arrived, and it was a mournful one. It was one of thy triumphs to kill a dish of trouts, even in the midst of frost, and at New-year's Day. A wager was laid, and