"At this time my chum, the friend of my heart, was in the same circumstances as myself. Never has my eye rested on a more manly form than Hector Wilson's. It was not merely a fine shell, covering a lump of insipidity; it was not a gorgeous casket in the jewel-chamber of a play-house, containing emptiness, or worthless painted glass; no, his outside was, like the palace of a king, the true representative of the sumptuous grandeur that reigned within. Mystery hung over his involved life. He knew nothing of his parentage or family, having merely a confused remembrance of a dreadful scene, in which his mother was killed by interposing herself suddenly and fearlessly between his father and a mutinous crew on board his vessel. Her blood flowed on me,' said he, as I twisted my little arms round her on the deck; but I was dragged away, and never saw father or mother more.'

"Since that period, he had been indebted for protection to strangers, who were liberally paid for their care of him; but with such precaution and secresy, that no clue was left by which ingenuity could unravel his wild and strange conjectures. He was conscious of an unceasing and

anxious agency respecting his fate; for he was personally supplied with money at uncertain periods-receiving it in the dusk of the gloming, on the drawbridge of Leith, from a person in the garb of a sailor, who would answer no inquiries. These meetings were arranged by letters sent to him through the post-office.

"Whether this uncertainty respecting himself had sublimed his imagination, acting on thought as fire does on mercury; or whether nature had constructed the vessels of his heart so that imminent danger could not constringe them, I take not upon myself to determine; but I know, from personal observation, he was brave beyond the imputation of personal fear: he delighted in familiarity with all that is terrible. I have seen him hang over the precipices about Edinburgh, and risk his life a thousand times in mad adventure, conducted with consummate skill and unagitated prudence.

"For some time before my extreme want of money, he had not heard from his unknown banker; he was, therefore, not, as I said before, in the same, but in worse circumstances than myself. Indeed, when he was in cash I never

wanted; for he forced his upon me with the prodigality of youth, which estimates friendship higher than gold. Many were the vain attempts I made to furnish the means for the continuation of our extravagance. In proportion as our wants became urgent, we began to envy others, and to curse fortune for bestowing riches with such inequality; not considering that, compared to many, we were amply supplied. In short, we saw that others had what we wanted; the devil got possession of our minds, and, arming ourselves, we took up a position on the Glasgow road one night with the intention of emptying travellers' pockets to fill our own.

"It was an evening in November, as dark as Benlomond in a storm. The wind whistled sharply as it broke on our noses, and the rain threatened to pelt us from our post, when we heard the tramp of a horse approaching, and figured to our imagination a rich and easy prize. The traveller passed between us, on Hector's side: there was just light enough to see him. In a moment his bridle-rein was in Wilson's hand, and my pistol at his head. 'Fear nothing,' said Hector; 'it is

your trash of money, and not your life, we want;

but

your purse or your life we must have.' The stranger was quite speechless from fear and astonishment; so Hector seizing one arm and leg, and I the other, we disfurnished his pockets of their contents. 'Spare my life,' said he, in a tremulous voice, and I'll give you all I have.' Just as he had placed his last shilling in Hector's hand, a vivid flash of lightning crossed his face; and you may judge of what I felt, when I simply tell you, that its lurid light revealed to me my father!"

The ferocity of M'Donald's look, when he pronounced "My father," electrified me. His mouth and nose nearly met; the scowl of his forehead cast his lower face into deep shade; his eye, at every wink, sent forth a stream of spirituous fire; and the contraction of his cheek, drawing up with it the right side of his mouth, altogether displayed such internal commotion as I had not before witnessed in the human countenance. After a long, convulsive pause, he proceeded.

Agitation had so choked my poor father's voice, that it was not like his own. No wonder,

therefore, that I did not know him when he spoke. But when I saw his face, I felt as though the thunder, then pealing over us, had struck me dead. I saw, I heard no more, till he had gone; when, awaking as from a frightful dream, I found Hector near me where I lay on the ground, full of apprehension that I had been killed by the lightning. He congratulated me on our good fortune; and when I told him of the spectre that had frightened me, laughed at and ridiculed my weakness.

“The next morning I was visited by my old boy; and really, notwithstanding what had happened to me the night before, I felt it most difficult, while my father told me his tale of the robbery, to restrain myself. It was ludicrous enough for me to be the cause of all the long faces he made on the occasion; and to hear how the rogue snapped his pistol in his ear, and how it burnt priming; and how he saw, by the flash in the pan, a band of robbers about him, with drawn, flaming swords; and, in short, how he saw a thousand things that he never saw, but in the glass of his disordered imagination: such a distorter of ob