"Oh, dear me! dear me!" I heard her cry; "what will his puir mother do noo--for she already is like ane clean out o' her judgment about him." I did not stop for the word "halt," or for the breaking of the lines; and I went home, I may say by instinct, for neither bird, bush, house nor tree, man nor bairn, was I capable of discerning by the road. Grief and heart-bursting anxiety were as scales upon my eyes. I remember of rushing into the house, throwing down my gun, and crying--"O Agnes! Agnes!" And as well do I remember her impatient and piteous inquiry--"Where is my Robie?--Oh, where is my son?--hae ye no seen him?" It was long before I could compose myself, so as to tell her all that I knew concerning him; and it was even longer before she was sufficiently calm to comprehend me. Never did unhappy parents before experience greater bitterness of soul. I strove to comfort her, but she would not listen to my words; for oh, they were as the blind leading the blind; we both were struggling in the slough of despair--both were in the pit of dark, bewildering misery. We sometimes sat looking at each other, like criminals whose last hour is come; and even when our grief wore itself into a "calm sough," there was something in our silence as dismal and more hopeless than the silence of the grave itself. But, every now and then, she would burst into long, loud lamentations, mourning and crying for "her son!--her son!" Often, too, did we sit, suppressing our very breath, listening to every foot that approached, and as one disappointment followed another, her despair became deeper and deeper, louder and louder, and its crushing weight sank heavier and heavier upon my spirit. Some of his young companions informed us, that Robin had long expressed a determination to be a soldier; and, on the following day, I set out for Edinburgh to seek for him there, and to buy him off at any price, if he had enlisted. There, however, I could gather no tidings concerning him; and all that I could learn was, that a regiment had left the Castle that morning at two o'clock, and embarked at Leith for Chatham, from whence they were to proceed direct abroad; and that several recruits were attached to it, some of them only sworn in an hour before they embarked; but whether my poor Robie was among them or not, no one could tell. I left Edinburgh no wiser, no happier, and in no way more comforted than I entered it, and returned to his mother a sad and sorrowing-hearted man. She wrung her hands the instant she beheld me, and, in a tone that might have touched the heart of a stone, cried aloud--"Oh, my lost! lost bairn! Ye hae made a living grave o' yer mother's breast."