the very stone trough that we may still see amang the ruins. His hour
had come, an' he had fallen in a fit, as 'twould seem, head-foremost
amang the water o' the trough, where he had been smothered,--an' sae ye
see, the prophecy o' the kelpie availed naething."




WHIPPETY STOURIE.


There was once a gentleman that lived in a very grand house, and he
married a young lady that had been delicately brought up. In her
husband's house she found everything that was fine--fine tables and
chairs, fine looking-glasses, and fine curtains; but then her husband
expected her to be able to spin twelve hanks o' thread every day, besides
attending to her house; and, to tell the even-down truth, the lady could
not spin a bit. This made her husband glunchy with her, and, before a
month had passed, she found hersel' very unhappy.

One day the husband gaed away upon a journey, after telling her that he
expected her, before his return, to have not only learned to spin, but to
have spun a hundred hanks o' thread. Quite downcast, she took a walk
along the hillside, till she cam' to a big flat stane, and there she sat
down and grat. By and by she heard a strain o' fine sma' music, coming
as it were frae aneath the stane, and, on turning it up, she saw a cave
below, where there were sitting six wee ladies in green gowns, ilk ane o'
them spinning on a little wheel, and singing,

"Little kens my dame at hame