day in such a style, nobody ever saw the like! We started on the clints of the mid hill, when foxy took out in fine style over Bowden Moor, west by Cauldshiels Loch, and doubled down by the Shirra's at Abbotsford. I saw where he was to come, and did not need to follow round, but cantered down and keppit him at Johnnie Martin's tub on his way back to the Gateheugh. They were nearly a' thrown out but Mr. Baillie an' myself, with Andrew Lumsden and half of the hounds, when we got over everything like fleein' birds, down to Old Melrose, where, just as we were on his brush, he took the water, and got into the Gateheugh grey rock. Here Mr. Baillie says to me, 'Od, Raeburn,' says he, 'you're as knowing an old jockey as ever; you know how to ride, and when to save your horse. I never saw that nag in better order, now when the season's wellnigh over."" "You have had more experience than a score of these gentle young bucks, sir," says I; “it would be well for them if they only had the sense to take example; but they'll ride down a deal of hunder pounders before they arrive at your knowledge of field matters. I'm glad, however, that foxy got into the grey rock; he'll serve you another day, when I hope to see you come fleein' home through the village with the white tuft o' his auld grey brush waving at your saddle bow." What a rogue I then was in saying this, as I always feel pleased in seeing foxy give his pursuers the jilt, keeping up his credit, as in the old fables.

However, little do we ever know what is for the best. I had reason afterwards to rue at not having taken Hunter's old house at any price, as then I

could have got up the money I intended to pay it with, which belonged to my sister, from Andrew Knox, tenant of Mainhill, and his brother John of Charlesfield, which, not thus requiring it at the time, lay still some years till they failed, and it was mostly lost.

But we would require to live ten life-times over to get ourselves properly summered and wintered into the saving knowledge requisite to surmount, with any chance of success, the casual obstructions to a poor man's pilgrimage through this world on his way to the next. Yet we are always getting on in some fashion, through the windings of this life's chase, long or short, the hunters and the hunted, like the old rock fox, and the Squire's old grey hunter, who, with himself, have all alike long ago run to earth, and got numbered amongst "the flowers o' the forest," who "are a' wed away."

Thus again settled, I stuck down to my stool and awls, as fixed as rosin, and now more easily restraining all desire of outfield recreations, such as fishing and shooting, yet still reputed and employed as chief amongst our local fishers and fly-dressers, in the way of directing and advising, according to circumstances. In this I felt a pleasure, just in proportion to the gratification of others, for I have yet had no pleasure in life equal to that of pleasing others rationally. Some may urge that the above-named pursuits are not rational, but that is a question in ethics not to be solved rashly. Yet, in such sort of agreeable exercise of the ingenuous mind, we feel often sad disappointments, such as to throw us into frequent low spirits, when we perceive that, notwithstanding

all our professional adherence to proper rules of life and conduct, even Christian rules forsooth, let the pretence be what it will, the moving influence actually stimulating all action is too generally low, grubbing, and selfish in the extreme.

What a deplorable view of this life does it present to the sentient mind to perceive clearly that from potentates, prime ministers, and priests, up or down to cadgers and cobblers, all are professing a religion, as they term or suppose something in its name, that they do not seem to comprehend, hardly in the meantime practising the precepts of wild heathen virtue, far less the charities of life, as a duty for Christ's sake, if opposed to their desires of in-bred selfishness. Upon Upon an inquisitive review, indeed, we perceive that most men are still acting in open accordance with all the past history of the human race, the leading features of which seem to have been the conceits of ignorance, superstition, and fanaticism, generally expressed in the hypocritical cant-phrase and professed opinion of the running day and hour; while their gods of the earth, these incarnations of the vilest human lusts, are claiming the idolatry of the heart and the daily practice of the life. Any advance from this to more elevated thought or moral action I have conceived to be a wonderful move in the scale of improvement, and have ever since been aiming at it, because, if there is any virtue at all in the constitution of our human nature, it is a pity to let it lie inactive through life, and remain a dead principle in a world where there is so much occasion for its active operation.

CHAPTER XXXI.

M

Y friend, David Ovens, on the occasion of his pet parting with me, had got on with Tom Kyle in one of his mad speculations, by commencing wood-merchants, in partnership forsooth. They set up a woodyard at Hiltonshill, and made a roaring business of it. David considered himself secure, having the retail and book-keeping departments of the business in his own hand. Nor did he take account of the possibility of his copartner buying and selling great lots of timber in name of the firm, leading him into immense liabilities, and in the end leaving him, as he did, mulct of half his original patrimonial inheritance. Calculating on the remaining half, David again joined in partnership with another adventurer in the wood-merchant line. They went to the north country, bought and felled some Scotch forest about Beauly, and floated the wood down the river there, in which way he floated away his last acre of separate lands left him by both mother and father. This loss of his all might have even been foregone or got over had he not still stood bound for some of Kyle's other concerns to an enormous amount, over-reaching all his means, and totally

overwhelming to him. So, swept from the north, where he had been some year or more sojourning, down he fled here, as a temporary retreat before the sough of ruin's brandished besom.

I had heard he was in the village, and had seen him passing, though I knew not the extent of his misfortunes, when one day, standing on the river bank looking over to the water, I saw him coming along, and knew he must pass me or move off at a tangent. "I shall put his pride to the test," thinks I; so kept my station till he came forward. "Well,

David?"

66

how are ye, Thank you, quite well." "Are ye come to have a plunge in on these fish ?” I asked. "The water looks well," says he; "I should like to have a trial, but all my feathers and stuffs have gone to wreck since I left; I have nothing now to dress a fly with." "You shall have anything I have, David, on condition that you will come in with me and choose for yourself, as you used to do long ago, before that silly estrangement." "It was silly, I daresay," says David, "for I never had any dislike to you." "Well, no more of it," says I; "I only wish I could get out a-fishing along with you, as we used to go together formerly; so come in with me and let us be good boys again." So in he came, and had a review of my stuffs, from which he picked the necessaries, when I proposed to go to Eiliestoun in the evening in order to get a further supply of turkey feathers. He offered to accompany me. We accordingly went, and got a fresh stock of fine grey spreckles and white-tops. In coming home over St. Boswell's Green he remarked that he felt thirsty, and not a little hungry, and, as his