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Truly Jacob, supplanting an hairy Highland Esau?
Shall he not, love-entertained, feed sheep for the Laban of Rannoch?
O happy patriarch he, the long servitude ended of wooing,
If when he wake in the morning he find not a Leah beside him!
But the Tutor enquired, who had bit his lip to bleeding,
How far off is the place? who will guide me there to-morrow?
But by the mail, ere the morrow, came Hope, and brought new tidings;
Round by Rannoch had come, and Philip was not at Rannoch;
He had left that noon, an hour ago.
With the lassie?—
With her? the Piper exclaimed, undoubtedly! By great Jingo!
And upon that he arose, slapping both his thighs, like a hero,
Partly, for emphasis only, to mark his conviction, but also
Part, in delight at the fun, and the joy of eventful living.
Really I did not enquire, answered Hope, but I hardly think it;
Janet, Piper, your friend, I saw, and she didn't say so,
Though she asked a good deal about Philip, and where he was gone to:
One odd thing by the bye, he continued, befell me while with her;
Standing beside her, I saw a girl pass; I thought I had seen her,
Somewhat remarkable-looking, elsewhere; and asked what her name was;
Elspie Mackaye, she answered, the daughter of David! she's stopping
Just above there, with her uncle. And David Mackaye where lives he?
It's away west, she replied, they call it Toper-na-fuosich.
IV.
Ut vidi, ut perii, ut me malus abstulit error.
SO in the golden weather they waited. But Philip came not.
Sunday six days thence a letter arrived in his writings.—
But, O Muse, that encompassest Earth like the ambient ether,
Swifter than steamer or railway or magical missive electric
Belting like Ariel the sphere with the star-like trail of thy travel,
Thou with thy Poet, to mortals mere post-office second-hand knowledge
Leaving, wilt seek in the moorland of Rannoch the wandering hero.
There is it, there, or in lofty Lochaber, where, silent up-heaving,
Hearing from ocean to sky, and under snow—winds of September,
Visibly whitening at morn to darken by noon in the shining,
Rise on their mighty foundations the brethren huge of Bennevis?
There, or westward away, where roads are unknown to Loch Nevish,
