to be shewn to his bedroom. The answer was, that the house contained
no bedroom for such as he, and he was finally driven out with the
coarsest abuse into the streets. The hour was ten o'clock, the month
December, and the severity of the weather may be guessed from the
fact, that the snow lay deep on the ground. After wandering about
for some time, he at last obtained shelter in a small house in the
outskirts of the city. The next day he fared little better. 'On
Sunday morning,' he relates, 'I was sixty-four miles from London,
and had only one shilling in my pocket. I was hungry, but durst not
eat; thirsty, and I durst not drink, for fear of being obliged to
lie all night at the side of a hedge in a cold night in December.
After dark, I travelled over to Bagshot; was denied admittance into
some of the public-houses, ill used in others.' He sought in vain
permission even to lie in a barn; but a labourer he fortunately fell
in with conducted him to a house, where, at the sacrifice of his
last shilling, he secured at length a bed. The next day--foot-sore,
penniless, and starving--he entered London. After remaining there a
brief space--January 1784--in spite of the inclement season, he set
off, again on foot, to Perth--a journey that occupied him three
weeks, as he was detained on the way by some friends whom he
visited. At Perth, where his old regiment then lay previous to its
disbandment, he amused himself by studying Gaelic, and the
controversy respecting Ossian and his poems. Quitting Perth, he
travelled, still on foot, through the Highlands, the inhabitants of
which he was, in the first instance, disposed to class with savages;
but when he had observed the originality of conception, the breadth
of humour, and the elevated sentiments which mark the Celt, his
opinions underwent a total revolution. He was especially delighted
with a ragged old reiver or cattle-lifter whom he encountered, and
who had given shelter to the Young Chevalier in the braes of