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“Faking” the brands, Millar confessed, used to be done by him and his master on a Sunday, in the vault of a neighbouring old peel tower, and at a time when everyone else was at church. It was easy enough, without exciting suspicion, to run the sheep into the yards on a Saturday night, and thence to the vaults, and no one would ever see the work of altering the buists going on, for “Yarrow” sat outside, and always, by barking, gave timely notice of the approach of any undesirable person.

The report was current in the country after the executions that the dog was hanged at the same time as his master, a rumour probably originated by the hawking about Edinburgh streets of a broadside, entitled the “Last Dying Speech and Confession of the Dog Yarrow.” In reality “Yarrow” was sold to a farmer in the neighbourhood of Peebles, but, strange to say, though as a thief he had been so supernaturally clever, as a dog employed in honest pursuits his intelligence was much below the average. Perhaps he was clever enough to be wilfully stupid; or maybe he had become so used to following crooked paths that the straight road seemed to him a place full of suspicion and dread.

In his Shepherd’s Calendar Hogg tells several tales of dogs owned by sheep-stealers, to which he says he cannot attach credit “without believing the animals to have been devils incarnate, come to the earth for the destruction of both the souls and bodies of men.” And certainly there was something uncanny, something almost devilish and malevolent, in the persistency with which they lured their masters on to crime. One young shepherd, for instance, after long strivings succumbed to the temptation to steal sheep from a far-distant farm, where at one time he had been employed. Mounted on a pony, and accompanied by a dog, the young man arrived at the far-off hill one moon-lit night, mustered the sheep he meant to steal, and started to drive them towards Edinburgh. Then, before even he had got them off the farm, conscience awoke–or was it fear of the consequences?–and he called off his dog, letting the sheep return to the hill. Congratulating himself on being well out of an ugly business, he had ridden on his homeward way a matter of three miles when again and again there came over him an eerie feeling that he was being followed, though when he looked back nothing was to be seen but dim moor and hill sleeping in the moonlight. Yet again and again it returned, that strange feeling, and with it now something like the whispering of innumerable little feet brushing through bent and heather. Then came a distant rushing sound and the panting as of an animal sore spent, and hard on the shepherd’s tracks there appeared over a knoll an overdriven mob of sheep flying before the silent, demoniacal, tireless energy of his own dog. He had never noticed that the animal had left him, but now, having once more turned the sheep towards their home, and severely chid his dog, he resolved that it should not again have the chance to play him such a trick. For a mile all went well, then suddenly the beast was gone. Dawn was breaking; he dared not stop where he was, nor dared to return to meet the dog. All that he could do was to take a route he was certain his dog did not know, and so would be sure not to follow, and thus he might abandon the animal to its own devices, hoping that he himself might not be compromised. For in his own mind he was very sure that the dog had once more gone back to collect the sheep. By a circuitous route which he had never followed before, going in at least one instance through a gate, which he securely fastened behind him, the shepherd at length reached a farm-house, where, as it chanced, both his sister and his sweetheart were in service. Here he breakfasted, and remained some time, and still there was no sign of the dog. All was no doubt well; after all, the beast must have somehow missed him in the night and had gone home; after the punishment he had received he would never have gone back again for the sheep. So, comparatively light of heart, the shepherd was just about to start on his journey, when up there came to him a man: