John_, in the neighbourhood of some fine crags. To these crags the
housemaid sent from Edinburgh to look after him, used to carry him up,
with a design (which she confessed to the housekeeper)--due, of
course, to incipient insanity--of murdering the child there, and
burying him in the moss. Of course the maid was dismissed. After this
the child used to be sent out, when the weather was fine, in the safer
charge of the shepherd, who would often lay him beside the sheep. Long
afterwards Scott told Mr. Skene, during an excursion with Turner, the
great painter, who was drawing his illustration of Smailholm tower for
one of Scott's works, that "the habit of lying on the turf there among
the sheep and the lambs had given his mind a peculiar tenderness for
these animals, which it had ever since retained." Being forgotten one
day upon the knolls when a thunderstorm came on, his aunt ran out to
bring him in, and found him shouting, "Bonny! bonny!" at every flash
of lightning. One of the old servants at Sandy-Knowe spoke of the
child long afterwards as "a sweet-tempered bairn, a darling with all
about the house," and certainly the miniature taken of him in his
seventh year confirms the impression thus given.
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