Heavy objects of all sorts floated in the air; rappings and voices were
heard; the end wall was pulled down by an unknown agency. The story is
extant in a pious old pamphlet called "Sadducees Defeated," and a great
deal more to the same effect--a masterpiece by the parish minister,
signed and attested by the other ministers of the Glen Kens. The
Edinburgh edition of the pamphlet is rare; the London edition may be
procured without much difficulty.
The site of this ruined cottage, however, had no terrors for the
neighbours, or rather for the neighbour, my shepherd. In fact, he seemed
to have forgotten the legend till I reminded him of it, for I had come
across the tale in my researches into the Unexplained. The shepherd and
his family, indeed, were quite devoid of superstition, and in this
respect very unlike the northern Highlanders. However, the fallen
cottage had nothing to do with my own little adventure in Glen Aline, and
I mention it merely as the most notable of the tiny ruins which attest
the presence, in the past, of a larger population. One cannot marvel
that the people "flitted" from the moors and morasses of Glen Aline into
less melancholy neighbourhoods. The very sheep seemed scarcer here than
elsewhere; grouse-disease had devastated the moors, sportsmen
consequently did not visit them; and only a few barren pairs, with crow-
picked skeletons of dead birds in the heather now and then, showed that
the shootings had once perhaps been marketable.
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