But, in holding this _tête-à-tête_ with Meggie, I have suffered myself to lose sight of the poets, and must now return to them. Next in the list to Johnie o’ the Shore was David Henderson, a native of Cromarty, born some time in the early part of the last century, and who died in the beginning of the present. He was one of that interesting class, concerning whom Nature and Fortune seem at variance; the one marking them out for a high, the other for a low destiny. They are fitted, by the gifts of mind bestowed upon them by the one, to think and act for themselves and others; and then flung by the other into some obscure lumber-corner of the world, where these gifts prove useless to them at best, and not unfrequently serve only to encumber them. From Nature David received talents of a cast considerably superior to those which she commonly bestows; by Fortune he was placed in one of the obscurest walks of life, and prevented from ever quitting it. He acquired his little education when employed in tending a flock of sheep; the herd-boys with whom he associated taught him to read, and he learned to write by imitating the letters of one of the copy-books used in schools upon the smooth flat stones which he found on the sea-shore. From his earliest years his life was one of constant toil. He was a herd-boy in his seventh, and a ploughman in his sixteenth year. He was then indentured to a mason; and he soon became one of the most skilful workmen in this part of the country, especially in hewing tombstones and engraving epitaphs. There is not a churchyard within ten miles of Cromarty in which there may not be seen some of his inscriptions. His heart was an affectionate one, and open to love and friendship; and when he had served his apprenticeship, and began to be known as a young man of superior worth and a good clear head, his company came to be much courted by the better sort of people. In his twenty-fifth year he became attached to a young girl of Cromarty, named Annie Watson, much celebrated in her day for her charms personal and mental. She was beautiful to admiration, rationally yet fervently pious, and possessed of a mind at once powerful and delicate. It was no wonder that David should love such a one; and, as no disparity of condition formed an obstacle to the union--as she was a woman of sense and he a man of merit--in all probability she would have made him happy. But, alas! in the bloom of youth she was taken from him by that insidious disease, which, while it preys on the vitals of its victims, renders their appearance more interesting, as if to make their loss the more regretted. She died of consumption, and David was left behind to mourn over her grave, and, when his grief had settled into a calm melancholy, to write a simple ballad-like elegy to her memory. I have heard my mother say, that it was left by David at the grave of his mistress, where it was afterwards picked up by a person who gave copies of it