midnights
The gipsy chieftain had also a grim cur of the true black-faced breed , famous for collecting and driving off sheep , and therefore distinguished by his own name . In the darkest cleughs or ravines , or in the deepest snow , this faithful animal had never been known to abandon the flock commited to his care , or to fail in tracing a fugitive . But , as sight and strength began to fail , the four-footed chieftain was deposed , imprisoned in a byre loft , and finally sentenced to be drowned . In one of those drear midnights so awful to travellers in the Highlands , a man , wrapped in a large coarse plaid , strode from a stone ridge , on the border of Loch Lomond , into a boat which he had drawn from its covert . He rowed resolutely and alone , looking carefully to the right and to the left , till he suffered the tide to bear his little bark into a gorge or gulf , so narrow , deep , and dark , that no escape but death seemed to await him . Precipices , rugged with dwarf shrubs and broken granite , rose more than a hundred feet on each side , sundered only by the stream , which a thirsty season had reduced to a sluggish and shallow pool . The boatman , poising himself erect on his staff , drew three times the end of a strong chain which hung among the underwood .