Of the six later-born children, all but one were boys, and the one sister was a somewhat querulous invalid, whom he seems to have pitied almost more than he loved.

At the age of eighteen months the boy had a teething-fever, ending in a life-long lameness; and this was the reason why the child was sent to reside with his grandfather--the speculative grandfather, who had doubled his capital by buying a racehorse instead of sheep--at Sandy-Knowe, near the ruined tower of Smailholm, celebrated afterwards in his ballad of _The Eve of St.
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.