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have a license from the government to carry on their trades; but this is not necessary if they do not deal on credit. If they have not the license they cannot be sed for debts contracted in their business, and cannot sue for debts contracted with them by others. If, therefore, they choose to deal solely for ready moncy, they need no license. The license operates, therefore, as a tax on giving and taking credit. Several persons, with whom I have conversed in France, think this tax a very wise measure; and I have generally found that there is in this country a roote I dislike to adventurous dealings; or, as the cant

term is, speculations. This dislike to gambling trade makes commerce less showy, but much more solid.

I cannot look across the channel without contrasting the stir, the bustle, the energetic motions, and the anxious looks that i shall there again behold, with the tranquil and happy careless. ness of the scents that I leave behind me. There seems to be more energy, more force, more human power, existing in one mile of England than in all France. The difference is perfectly surprising but it by no means follows, that the latter country has not, mile for mile, as much of solid means as the former. -By Cobbett the younger.

THE DEATH OF THE OLD YEAR.

CONDITION OF BANISHED CONVICTS. IN one of Miss Martineau's late little books about emigration, we have the condition of felons sent to Botany Bay, Van Diemen's Land, represented in the flattering light, as respects wordly advancement, which seems to have taken possession of all the thieves in the country. A felon brother has made a fortune, and comes in state from Hobart's Town, or Sydney, and takes possession of his purchase—an estate upon which his virtuous brother and sister, who have emigrated, are working as labourers. This is not the only instance in which the writer, looking hastily through the spectacles of books and newspaper reports, which rest on a slender foundation, is drawn to form very erroneous conclusions. The following description is at once more rational and more correct.

NEW SOUTH WALES.

It has been the fashion of England to represent this co

From a new Volume, by ALFRED TENNYSON just, published. lony of convicts as the Eldorado of felons--that a rascal i

Full kneedeep lies the winter snow,

And the winter winds are wearily sighing:
Toll ye the churchbell sad and slow,

And tread softly and speak low,
For the old year lies a-dying.

Old year, you must not die.
You came to us so readily,
You lived with us so steadily;
Old year, you shall not die.

He lieth still: he doth not move:
He will not see the dawn of day.
He hath no other life above.

He gave me a friend, and a true, truelove,
And the Newyear will take 'em away.

Old year, you must not go.

So long as you have been with us,
Such joy as you have seen with us,
Old year, you shall not go.

He frothed his bumpers to the brim;
A jollier year we shall not see.
But tho' his eyes are waxing dim,
And tho' his foes speak ill of him,
He was a friend to me.

Old year, you shall rot die.

We did so laugh and cry with you,
I've half a mind to die with you,
Old year, if you must die.

He was full of joke and jest;
But all his merry quips are o'er.'

To see him die, across the waste

His son and heir doth ride posthaste;

But he'll be dead before.

Every one for his own.

The night is starry and cold, my friend,
And the Newyear blithe and bold, my friend,
Comes up to take his own.

How hard he breathes! over the snow
I heard just now the crowing cock.
The shadows flicker to and fro;

The cricket chirps. the light burns low:
'Tis nearly one o'clock.

Shake hands, before you die.

Old year, we'll dearly rue for you.
What is it we can do for you?
Speak out before you die.

His face is growing sharp and thin.
Alack! our friend is gone.

Close up his eyes: tie up his chin:

Step from the corpse, and let him in,

That standeth there alone,

And waiteth at the door.

There's a new foot on the floor, my friend,
And a new face at the door, my friend,
A new face at the door.

no sooner arrived there than he becomes not only an honest man, but a gentleman; and that fellows, who in London walked up and down with their hands in other people's pockets, may there keep them in their own, with that very comfortable feeling which attends the finding something in them. A colonial newspaper, however, gives us a very different account of the state of affairs, and to undeceive certain speculative philosophers on the subject, we extrat the following enumeration of the comforts which await any practical experiments:

Comfort 1st.-As soon as he lands he is packed off 60, or 70, or 100 miles in the interior, or he is placed in the prisoners' barracks-of which it would be only necessary for any hon. member to see the inside to convince him it was no joke-in either of which cases, if he has brought any trifles with him, he is sure to be relieved of them be fore the following day. If he does not lose his govern rent clothing, he may consider himself fortunate; should he, however, do so, the following morning he may sately calculate upon

Comfort 2d. In the shape of 50 lashes, or 10 days' work on the treadmill, or in the chain-gang.

Comfort 3d.-If he be assigned to a master in the town, and happens to take a glass of grog after his long voyage, it is a great chance if he lodge not in the watch-house for the night, and take "fifty" before breakfast in the morning by way of comfort."

Comfort 4th.-Travelling through a wild forest without knowing his way, and surrounded, perhaps, by the hostile aborigines, who, so sure as they met, would kill him.

Comfort 5th. Should he lose his way, and escape starvation in the bush, probably a sound flogging for not hav ing arrived sooner at his master's house.

Comfort 6th.-Perpetual work, and no pay; in many cases hard labour, hard living, hard words, and hard usag We have hitherto spoken only of the reception met with by a well-disposed prisoner,-one who wishes to reform. A short answer, when spoken to by his master or overseer, or a common soldier, or even a convict constable, is a crime puni-hable by flogging; getting tipsy places him in the stocks: missing muster may get him flogged, or into the chain-gang, where he works in irons on the roads. Should he commit any second offence, Macquarie Harbour, Port Macquarie, Norfolk Island, or Moreton Bay is his fate; where every rigidity of discipline-nay, sometimes even cruelty-is exercised. The hardest of labour, and but one meal a-day, of the coarsest food, is the lot of the man who goes to a penal settlement. To these places it does not take felony to send a prisoner; many have been removed there for very trivial offences. When men commit murder on purpose to be hanged in preference to bearing the ter rors of these places of secondary exile, it cannot be expected that they are in the enjoyment of much "comfort."

THE PRESS IN THE EAST.-There are in Calcutta five daily and eight weekly newspapers, six monthly journals, two quar terlies, and two annuus.

THE STORY-TELLER.

some apprehension of reaching their next resting place. There were sickness in the family which the worthy Gideon

SCOTTISH MANNERS-THE FARMER'S HA' IN A had visited, and dissensions among the scattered flock; and

DECEMBER NIGHT.

BY MRS. JOHNSTONE.

when the minister let it be understood, that he had been detained by sympathy for the sick and the sorrowful, and in healing divisions and repairing breaches in the Zion of the Stinchar, he seemed to take for granted that no farther apology was necessary. In ordinary circumstances he never prolonged his visits, nor, as the gudewives remarked,

arrived at his quarters; and by daybreak, with the unbribed assistance of the herd-boy, he and Jenny Geddes were soberly plodding on to their next station.

In the dark month of December, in or about the year 1798, it chanced that Captain Wolfe Grahame, an officer in one of his Majesty's regiments of horse, then stationed in Ireland, and the Reverend Gideon Haliburton, parson of a small Cameronian congregation about the outskirts of Perthshire," abused discretion. " It was generally night-fall before he were travelling together towards Gallowayshire, the former to join his regiment, the latter to visit some old friends, and for the arrangement of business connected with his spiritual duties. The association of a young officer of cavalry, and a hill-side preacher, is not among the ordinary relations of social life, even in so primitive a country as Scotland was then: but Wolfe had been the pupil of Mr. Gideon, and was attached, by many carly and kind recollections, to his old tutor, who was one of the best men in the world; and circumstances made it desirable that their journey should be made conjointly, since their route lay the |

same way.

With more management than was perhaps necessary in a country where there was little chance of misconstruing the nature of their connexion, Captain Wolfe Grahame contrived to pilot himself and his companion through the various towns on their route, till on the fourth day they reached "Auld Ayr." They did not, however, at all times travel in company-for Mr. Gideon, with his mare, Jenny Geddes, almost every night diverged into the moors, where some little thatched building, without chimneys, constructed on the model of a farmer's salt-bucket, shewed a Seceder

place of worship, and gave hope of a neighbouring cottage equally modest in appearance, inhabited by some one of his truly apostolic brethren. It suited alike ill with Gideon's devotional and parsimonious habits to sojourn in even the humblest places of public entertainment, and would, besides, have been a breach of the customs of his order. When either ecclesiastical or secular business led them from home they had their regular stage-houses; and never was lying palmer or bare-foot friar more welcome at even-tide to the chimney-corner of franklin or yeoman, than was the wandering Cameronian minister to the ingle-neuk of the primitive farmers in the hill-country of the south-west of Scotland. The residences of the regular preachers were necessarily few and far apart; but lay members were, at that time, scattered throughout all those pastoral districts, at easy distances; and some pious and hospitable widow, or wealthy childless couple, had both a comforable spence for the man of God, and a barn for the wandering beggar or humble travelling merchant. Even in families less able to exercise hospitality, there was often some "Prophet's Chamber," curiously dove-tailed into a labyrinth of woodenwalled beds, which seldom wanted an occasional occupant. A shed and a little coarse fodder were more grudgingly bestowed upon Jenny Geddes and steeds of her degree, which in those times were as well known on the old drove roads in the southern counties, as are the short-lived horses which draw his Majesty's mail from St. Alban's to London at the present day.

On this kindly footing, Mr. Gideon was spending an evening in a muirland farm-house "behind the hills where Stinchar flows," with a grey-headed elder of his sect; and when he next day, by appointment, met Captain Wolfe Grahame on the coast, it was so late that they entertained

The friends had already traversed a good part of the interior of Ayrshire. A threatening evening was closing in on a rough gusty day, when they found themselves on the sea-side, but still much farther from their place of destination for the night than the state of the weather made agree able.-The latter part of their day's journey lay along a bold, wild, and broken line of coast, traversed by a road, leading now around low headlands, then sweeping into bays, and anon winding and climbing round the iron faces of high and rugged promontories. The only thing visible on this road, for many hours, was the Port-Patrick Fly, crawling onwards in the distance like the "shard-borne beetle."

The last discovery which Wolfe made before night-fall was unpleasant enough,-a skiff in the offing trimming her sails to meet the gale, and exhibiting marks of distress and

alarm.

"We are like to have a wild night, Mr. Gideon," said the

I will insist on

young soldier; "I wish to goodness we were at that Cross-
gates of Caberax, or whatever you call it.
your remaining there all night with me, notwithstanding
those hospitable friends all along who entertain you every
night, I think. You must stay with me, indeed. I am
rich, sir,-I have lands and beeves-or I shall have them."
This was the light speech which often accompanies a purse
as light.

Gideon was accused of parsimonious habits. The phrase was incorrect. That man cannot be called parsimonious who freely spends his whole living. Gideon's was a small one; but his wants were far less, so that he was comparatively a rich man; and, what is more rare, positively thought himself so, when, at the end of the half-year he paid his few debts, and gave to "him that needed" all that remained over, literally laying up his treasure in heaven. With something of the complacence inseparable from the consciousness of possessing property-for he had a guinea and some shillings in his pocket he replied to Wolfe's proposal of defraying their common travelling charges.

Did ye

"Na, na! Captain Wolfe, make yourself easy about that, my lad. I'm far frae being a needy man. no hear of the hunder merks augmentation, man? I never looked for it, I'm sure; but my lot as to temporals has been casten in pleasant places. What wi' ae thing, and what wi' anither; the ruckle of a house, (the Session are to set a man to mend the theek, and have it made warm and water-tight aboon the bed-in summer the holes in the roof were airy and pleasant enough,) the kail-yard, and the gang o' the common muir for Jenny, I cannot call the living o' the Sourholes muckle war, communibus annis, put the head o' the sow to the tail o' the grice, than fiveand-thretty English punds."

This was whispered a pause between every emphatic word-in a quite confidential style, Gideon advancing his mouth to the young man's ear, and Jenny kindly laying her long dewy nose on the proud neck of Wolfe's steed, Saladin, a freedom which he scarcely appeared to relish.

"I have a kind people," continued Gideon." The gudewives have been on me to take a drop tea-water in my loneliness. Burd 'Lizbeth has given me the trick o' that too-and to be sure I can weel afford it; but for a man like me, Captain Wolfe, to be pettling himsel' up with delicates, while mony a precious saint and puir thing want a meltith o' bare porridge, is no' to be thought of.-Make me worthy o' a' this kindness! and forbid that riches prove a snare to me a second time!"

"No fear of that, sir-I shall be your guarantee," said

Grahame.

ye

fu', the women-folk tell me, for I'm an ignoramus in needle-work. In that six weeks she last sojourned at the Sourholes, she did as much white seam, and embroidery upon the heels o' my rig-and-fur stockings, as would have cost me twenty-pence sterling to the school-mistress o' Castleburn; so let us ne'er reckon that turn hospitality, We are ready enough to be vain-glorious without calling the keeping of puir Jacky Pingle, (whom never a one would take off my hands neither,) by the name of a grace of deevine injunction, whereby some have entertained angels."

"I certainly do not mistake your keeping poor Miss Jacky for entertaining an angel," said Grahame, laughing again; "but I am sure, as I said, if you are not hospitable I don't know who is. By the way, I know of no word in the English language more abused, or of more ambiguous meaning than this same.-One hears of the hospitality of the feudal chieftain. I beg to place it exactly on the level with that of the modern hospitality of the candidate for parliament;—so much beef and ale,—so many balls and feasts,-for so much reputation to be maintained, or ser vice done or expected. The hospitalities of fine people, which we sometimes hear of, are another spurious species of this kindly virtue :-splendid entertainments, a sacrifice to

"I kenna, Captain Wolfe. Let him that thinks he standeth tak' heed. I was laid under sore and dark temptation this very time twalmonth, in the shape of what call a double Joe. I had never seen coined money o' the splendour and value. It was paid me in the Martlemas half-year's stipend. So I laid by my golden idol i' the kistcoffer, in a horn snuff-mull; and in the very watches of the night, even upon my quiet bed, the demon o' covetousness, Mammon himsel', would put in my head my golden Jo-personal vanity, given in ostentation, and received, as they hannes, and how I could best put it out to usury, and lay anither and anither till't: but I wrestled, and, wi' the help o' the Mighty, prevailed. I trust my bank and coffer will be my breek pouch, or some puir widow wife's meal ark in a' time coming. I'll hae' nae mair locking o' coffers -nae Tubal-Cain wark in my tents."

The good man shut his grey eyes, and appeared engaged for a minute in ejaculatory thanksgiving, for this signal deliverance from the snare of riches, and the power of covetousness. A smile rose on Grahame's lip—a half-heaved sigh chased it away, as he contrasted his own illumination, and the knowledge of good and evil obtained by eating the bitter apples of experience, with the apostolic simplicity of Gideon.

"With your known hospitality," said Wolfe, "I could not have conceived you very rich-so you must indeed allow me"

"Hospitality little to brag o' in that way, my lad.

To gi'e a meal o' hamely meat, or a brat o' auld duds to a needy fellow-creature that falls in my way, in the name of Him who has given me so largely to enjoy, is but a sma' matter, Captain Wolfe. To be sure my auld garments are, as ye say, nae great shakes."And he cast his eye on a coat cuff, of which every thread might be counted without the aid of a weaver's magnifying glass." But this is my

kirk and causey clothes."

neither need nor crave kindness nor countenance, though deserve to be, with indifference or scorn, by persons who they may lack amusement. In a lower rank, the same feeling of vanity leads another class of persons to féte all sorts of people, artists, travellers, recruiting-officers, players, and so forth the wonderful-the wild! and this, forsooth, must be hospitality! This unfortunate grace has much to answer for, which ought, in all conscience, to be laid elsewhere. No man, Mr. Gideon, was ever yet a martyr to this virtue, if exercised in its pure and simple sense. The entertainer of the desolate and the widow, the sick, the maimed, the blind, he who leads the bashful unfriended stranger to his modest feast, will never, I venture to predict, ruin himself by hospitality; a virtue which, according to some folks, fills half the bankrupt list."

"Verily, there is a smack of rationality in what you saj, Captain Wolfe."

"I am sure hospitality, if it has a home on earth, still lingers in Strathoran with you and my uncle," continued Wolfe. "I vow there is more genuine kindness in the dinner he so often gives to these poor devils, the Rookston peripatetic surgeon, scouring our country-side on sixpenny bleedings and shilling blisters, and our nonjuring curate, with his triple duty and quarter pay, than in twenty Lord Mayors' banquets, or letter-of-introduction dinners. I leave him in evil times, Mr. Haliburton ; but I trust a blessing will remain on the kind old soul that never once sent a hungry I am sure if I am not a better man as long as I live for having known you both, I deserve to be hanged."

"Nay, I rather think I have sometimes seen them very heart from his gate. great shakes," said Grahame, laughing.

But a pun, however bad or good, fell alike innocuous on honest Gideon, who never had the most glimmering per

Upon hearing this suspicious doctrine, savouring, in deed, of ramping prelacy, Gideon girded up his loins for the polemic combat, and was about, at some length, to correct the young soldier's heterodox notions of charity, mercy, and hospitality, when the youth called his attention to the struggling skiff, which a commanding point of the road now had all day long hooded the braes, now rolled fast down upon enabled them to see clearly. The lazy chill mists, which their path. Cape, and island, and promontory, which had sleight wi' her thimble and her shears that's just wonder- the shelall day stretched away in hazy perspective, were, one by

ception of a double meaning in any thing he had heard in his life: so the young man went on " I am sure if you are not hospitable, I don't know who is-I have known you keep daft folk, and lamiters, and beggars, about the Sourholes for weeks and months together :-our friend, daft Miss Jacky Pingle, for instance."

"Small thanks to me for that, lad: we were auld stair neighbours, as I have aften tauld you, when I was a student; and, when her brain is no a' the higher, she has a

➡ring angle of a screen of rocks, they were at once exposed the unmitigated fury of the tempest, which came wildly shing from the ocean, shaking drizzling vapours from its irrs, as they flapped against the splintered cliffs, at whose se the full tide was boiling and lashing. The full moon drifting on in the heavens through dun and yellow uds, as if she too had gone astray, and had to mainin the same struggle above which the little vessel held in e weltering tide.—Altogether, the prospect was comfortis and painful.

“We will have a foul night, Mr. Haliburton. The nd has ever some mischief in its head, when it whistles libulere at its destructive work in that way. Can you these poor souls yet?"

Gideon groaned-" Alack no! Those who go down to sea in ships, and see the wonders of the great deep, have ach to thole as well as to see, Captain Wolfe. Let us amit them to Him who sitteth in the floods, and holdeth winds in the hollow of his hand; who maketh the nd their tabernacle !—and push on Jenny to Mossbrettles John Fennick's. He wones in a slack near by the seae; and we can hing out his lantern to guide the boat off Tanchancy bit down there, that has smashed many a dly vessel. Profane folk name it the De'il's Saut-backet; in very deed I never heard it get another name-so at can I ca' it?"

And very well named too, sir; but as I trust these poor that is souls, will not be laid in his Black Majesty's Ale to night, I shall push on and do what I can with ir friends; and you may come up at your leisure with my."

Mightily did Gideon spur not to be left behind in the of humanity, and often did he apostrophize Jenny dies; but before he reached the Caberax, a fire was tting on the low point, and Grahame stood there directa group of young fellows, all ready to obey his orders, from their superior knowledge of the coast, to suggest tter expedients.

Travelling apostles, as well as every other description of veller, are often, we think, fully as much indebted to the as to the stern sex, for the comfort and kindness o. ir reception.

** The best of the board, and the seat by the fire," dis Scotland, time immemorial, been the prescriptive ht of the "Haly-wark folk ;" and, nothing slackened hospitality, David Fennick and his wife cordially welBed" the man of God;" and, as he was cold and wet, I could be of no use whatever on the shore, laid hands of lent possession upon him as soon as he proposed going join the young men. So his clothes were changed for and warm garments, and he sat him snugly down in chimney-nook.

If the evening was rough without, its discomfort served enhance the cheerful couthiness of the Farmer's Ha'. is kitchen and hall-for it was the common room of the rous family, and served for all domestic purposes, ▲ a large apartment with strong, rough, stone walls ed by shining smoky rafters, and furnished with a wide, bopied, open chimney. Through its picturesque intricablazing fire filling the cradle-grate, liberally fed from neighbouring bog, diffused a ruddy lustre, richer and armer than the costliest blaze ever yet shed through halls pride, by wax candles or oil gas. A brazen sconce, a few tight copper utensils, and a bink well filled with pewter, d more for the apartment in the way of appropriate de

coration than mirrors or pictures could have done. But the Ha' wanted not its pictures. In an antique, carved, oaken settle below the chimney canopy, discoursing with his guest, sat the grey-haired patriarch, clad in homespun old Covenanter and the "monarch of a shed;" regarding, muirland grey, with a softened bearing between the stern with looks of sober kindness, his well-disciplined subjects, busy on all sides of him with their accustomed tasks and duties. Next to him, but lower in place, on a tripod, sat a little decent matron, (a maiden by the way,) his wife's aunt, carding wool to supply the spinning thrift of David's blooming, woman-grown daughter, who merrily turned her wheel, with that subdued hum which was the nearest approach she durst make to profane singing in her father's honoured presence. Sometimes she involuntarily cast backwards a quick and bashful glance if a tirl was heard at the door pin, a movement which as constantly drew upon her the arch eye of a boy, her younger brother, who was stretched before the fire conning his Latin lesson for the next day. A ploughman, nearly as old and grey as his master, was driving hobnails into a clouted shoe; and, a little in the back ground, the herd-boy was twisting a bird's cage of twigs a little boy, the Benjamin of David's old age, looking on as the wonderful frame grew beneath the cunning right hand of Jock. A squab, four-cornered, ruddy, serving wench pounded away in another corner, mashing a steaming pot of po

tatoes for the common supper of the family, an allowance which might have fed a whole hill-side congregation; and the gudewife, a comely well-thriven matron, many years younger than her lord, though on hospitable thoughts intent, contrived to superintend the whole establishment. A goodly and gracious show of black puddings, hung to be smoked in the chimney, showed that good things were going; for the Mart was lately killed. And while Gideon and his host seated apart―

reasoned high

Of Providence, fore-knowledge, will, and fate,
Fixed fate-

the fate of an eirack was sealed, perhaps in honour of Captain Grahame.

"My worthy father-ye'll mind him weel, Mr. Gideon,' said the gudewife, "had aye a joke, that there was a natural friendship and couthiness between a black coat and a black puddin'; and ye'se have one to relish the potatoes this night if it were my last." And she cast an eye of pride over her plentiful stores. This was said in the absence of David, who had gone forth to see that the cattle were properly foddered.

David was a good deal of the Milton in his domestic circle. Except towards the darling Benjamin, he was indeed a very strict disciplinarian with all his household. Few external marks of mirth durst be shown in his presence; but when he withdrew to his private out-door devotions, or to his wooden-walled dormitory, there came an hour of juvenile relaxation to the family, at which David winked hard, as every sensible absolute monarch should do, wh wishes to avoid open revolt among his subjects. But peace, and plenty, and goodness were about him; and the whispered gibe of the boys to their sister or to the maid-servant, and the matron's frequent whispered rebuke of—“ Will ye no be quiet ?-the gudeman will just fell ye!" shewed that

A year old fowl.

genuine gaiety of heart was here, its native spring uninjur- nin' low? How shall man, proud worm! limit the dea ing of Omnipotence with the immortal spirits He has call ed, though its expression might be subdued. into existence ?”

While David was occupied in littering his cattle, grumbling a little at the protracted absence of his son and the younger farm-servants, who still fed a bickering fire on the shore, Mr. Gideon strode off in that direction, guided by the signal lights.

Now to David's long ears this sounded very like fal doctrine; and he delivered a pious speech, which so st the "Old Adam" in the heart of his neighbour-tenan: of Moss, that he exclaimed-" I wad rather hear the sugh the south-east win' that's to blaw thae puir battered In deevils by the De'ils Saut-backet, than a' the peching a graining e'er was grained on a hill-side."

At this instant a ruffian billow, rushing in with head fury, swept the little vessel on, till it almost seered

touch the firm earth where our anxious group were a bled. The blaze of the fire danced and flared on the fa crest of the wave and in the faces of the crew, consisting three men and two females, one of the latter-strarg say!-holding the helm. Words of cheer-of synt of counsel, were eagerly shouted from the land by Gra and the other young men; and ropes were actively th skiff onward, snatched it back in its fearful recoil, far

The police established along this line of coast at that period, during the Irish insurrection, was, of necessity, extremely vigilant and severe. The pernicious influences of that evil time, which steeled the human breast against its kiud, had even extended to this region of tranquillity and comparative safety; and the inhabitants of the Scottish side were disposed to view whatever approached from the opposite coast, with great distrust and unreasonable aversion. The family of another farmer, who, with David, was joint occupier of this headland moor, were still engaged in the latest harvest-work of a tardy season. During the whole afternoon of this tempestuous day, this farmer had observed the skiff beating about in the bay, and conjectured that it had stolen out from some inlet on the beleaguered coast of Antrim, which perhaps its crew found more peril-sight for ever from sight, it was feared—and every eye ous than the iron-bound shores of the south-west of Scot-fixed, and every heart shivered, as a yell rose from some a land, and that coil of waves, currents, and breakers, amid which they were struggling. The fate of the little vessel had indeed, for some hours back, been the object of eager Rebels, and agitating interest to the people on the coast. murderers, or incendiaries its crew might be still they

were human, and in this hour of mortal peril the claim was felt in all its force. The presence and exertions of Captain Grahame had, moreover, by this time brought humanity into good fashion; and though the discipline of David Fennick's household did not permit his womankind to roam abroad, there were several females standing with the group which Gideon and David joined; and their sympathies were fully awakened, and had the strongest influence on those around them.

Oh! if they could reach the Cutter-or if the Cutter

could reach them!" cried one of the women, who watched the labouring skiff with intense interest, uttering stifled groans as the little storm-tossed speck was seen through the opening spindrift, or swept from view by the swell of the

breakers, and expressing renewed hope as the frail thing again rose in sight, and gallantly mounted the ridge of the billow.

The Cutter!" cried a man of greater information.

"That would be gaun between the de'il and the deep sea wi' a witness! 'Od, they may be saying their neck-verse if the Cutter overtake them; and she has been full chase after them since the skiff was first seen aff the Scart's Craig. It's just as weel to be drowned I think, David, at the Almighty's pleasure, as hanged, drawn and quartered by the Government."

Wo is me! wo is me!"

"This is nae joking matter.

said the female

are warm flesh and blood like ourselves."

out; but the same tremendous wave which had borne

seen drowning wretch over whom the billows clored a ever. In a few seconds the skiff rose once again into ne but with one man short of its original number. St little crew bore them gallantly, with firmness and press of mind, which gave the spectators something of the w delight experienced in witnessing some noble pasti, which ruffian strength is matched against skill, con and energy.

A signal gun was fired from the sea. The fash seen distinctly; the report came broken and driven a by the wind.

them up.

"That's the Cutter still in chase," said David's ne bour. "But the tempest will do their business. 11 Come hame, lads, and bring the ropes wi' ya "O ye of little faith!" shouted Gideon. Can He let loose the winds no stay them? Is His arm shorten

is His hand straitened? Did He make the dry lend not the sea also? Is His time not a good time?-is hand not a gracious hand?-Bide ye still."

Another “ruffian billow" again tossed the skiff up foamy mane, and then seemed to gulp it down into its

mendous jaws.

rishing creatures!" cried Gideon." That, neighe "O, Lord! of thy infinite mercy remember thy pur

was a fearfu' whomle!"

"Ay! that jaw gave e'en your faith a heisie, ministe

said David's profane neighbour.

Contrary to all expectation, a heavy shower having what beat down the fury of the storm, the little vessel, 4 more out at sea, was seen to weather the point round a it had all the afternoon been beating. Grahame an

Be they what they will, they eldest son, and in reality the most useful person of the t group, were certain that they had seen, in the bright gi of a still-wading moon the shadow of its little mast ing on the water, and that it had got through the and past the entrance of that place which Gideon so rocking and reeling on the brink of an eternity, whilk may disliked to name. Others of the number as confident

“Ay, and soul and spirit, Euphane!" said David Fennick—“ puir, sinfu' perishing souls like yoursels, sirs,

be as near to us as to them; though there appear to us but a moment's space and a rotten plank, between them and the fierce and fiery indignation which hastens to consume."

dicted the inevitable destination of the boat to be this

Deil's Saut-Backet.

Whatever her fate was, he was gone from their

Let us hope better things for them, friend David," said and the rain was pouring in torrents, so they dispers

Gideon," baith for time and for eternity. Is there no balm

Mr. Gideon going to his friend's hospitable hearth,

in Gilead? Is there no Physician there? Is there not hope invitation, to the little way-side public-house where he Wolfe Grahame, notwithstanding David's kind if not tra

for the sinner, ay, even were the last sands o' his glass rin

left his horse.

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