"And, say the best you can, 'tis plain, "That here hath been some wicked dealing; "No doubt the devil in me wrought;

"I'm not the man who could have thought "An Ass like this was worth the stealing!"

So from his pocket Peter takes
His shining horn tobacco-box;

And, in a light and careless way,

As men who with their purpose play,
Upon the lid he knocks.

Let them whose voice can stop the clouds

Whose cunning eye can see the wind

Tell to a curious world the cause

Why, making here a sudden pause,

The Ass turned round his head and grinned.

Appalling process! I have marked
The like on heath in lonely wood,
And, verily, have seldom met

A spectacle more hideous — yet

It suited Peter's present mood.

And, grinning in his turn, his teeth
He in jocose defiance showed —

When, to confound his spiteful mirth,
A murmur, pent within the earth,
In the dead earth beneath the road,

Rolled audibly!-it swept along-
A muffled noise-a rumbling sound!
'Twas by a troop of miners made,
Plying with gunpowder their trade,
Some twenty fathoms under ground.

Small cause of dire effect!

If ever mortal, King or Cotter,

for, surely,

Believed that earth was charged to quake

And yawn for his unworthy sake,

"Twas Peter Bell the Potter!

But, as an oak in breathless air

Will stand though to the centre hewn ;
Or as the weakest things, if frost

Have stiffened them, maintain their

post;

So he, beneath the gazing moon!

Meanwhile the pair have reached a spot Where, sheltered by a rocky cove,

A little chapel stands alone,

With greenest ivy overgrown,

And tufted with an ivy grove.

Dying insensibly away

From human thoughts and purposes,

The building seems, wall, roof, and tower, To bow to some transforming power,

And blend with the surrounding trees.

Deep-sighing as he passed along,
Quoth Peter, "In the shire of Fife,
"'Mid such a ruin, following still
"From land to land a lawless will,
"I married my sixth wife!"

The unheeding Ass moves slowly on,
And now is passing by an inn

Brim-full of a carousing crew,

That make, with curses not a few,

An uproar and a drunken din.

I cannot well

express

the thoughts

Which Peter in those noises found;

A stifling power compressed his frame, As if confusing darkness came

Over that dull and dreary sound.

For well did Peter know the sound;
The language of those drunken joys
To him, a jovial soul, I ween,
But a few hours ago, had been
A gladsome and a welcome noise.

Now, turned adrift into the past,
He finds no solace in his course;
Like planet-stricken men of yore,
He trembles, smitten to the core
By strong compunction and remorse.

But, more than all, his heart is stung
To think of one, almost a child;
A sweet and playful Highland girl,
As light and beauteous as a squirrel,

A lonely house her dwelling was,
A cottage in a heathy dell;

And she put on her gown of green,

And left her mother at sixteen,
And followed Peter Bell.

But many good and pious thoughts
Had she; and, in the kirk to pray,
Two long Scotch miles, through rain or snow,
To kirk she had been used to go,
Twice every Sabbath-day.

And, when she followed Peter Bell,
It was to lead an honest life;

For he, with tongue not used to falter,
Had pledged his troth before the altar
To love her as his wedded wife.

She drooped and pined like one forlorn ;From Scripture she a name did borrow;

Benoni, or the child of sorrow,

She called her babe unborn.