disappointed. I came a third night, and found a continuance of the interruption. The same individual was on the same spot, muttering to himself, and chucking pebbles into the dark pool of the burn immediately before him. I retired, almost cursing him in my heart; and came no more back to the place. Now, in the frenzied man who accosted me, as already mentioned, on the street by night, I recognised at once the individual who had so interrupted me some fourteen months before in the lonely glen by the side of the burn; and, as I had conceived a dislike to him unreasonably, and probably in the very midst of his sorrows, I now felt it the more to be my duty to look after him in his afflicted condition. I was following him accordingly, when a woman, advanced in life, came rushing up to meet him, and laying hold of him, cried loudly for assistance. This was easily found in such a place—indeed, the street was already beginning to be excited on his account; and the poor man was, without delay, forcibly carried back to her house, where, on my following, I learned that he was a lodger with the woman, that he was sick of a brain fever, and that, during a brief interval in her watching of him, he had made his escape down stairs, and had got upon the street. I was now deeply interested in the poor fellow, and determined to see him again the following morning, which I did, and found him much worse. making inquiry at the woman of the house respecting him, she told me that he had no relatives in this country, though he was a Scotchman; that he was a half-pay military officer; that he did not seem to want money; and that he was a generous, good man. She added, moreover, that he had lodged in her house two months; and that, previous to his illness, he had spoken of a friend whom he expected every day to visit him from a distant part of the country, to make arrangements for their going together to the Continent.

On

In two days more, Lieutenant Crabbe (such, I learned, was his name and commission) died; and, by a curious dispensation of Providence, I ordered the funeral, and laid

in the grave the head of the man whom, only a few months before, I had almost cursed as a disgusting fellow. The alien mourners had withdrawn from the sodded grave, and I had just paid the sexton for this last office to poor Crabbe, when the woman in whose house he had died advanced with a young man, who had the air of a military officer. "That's the gentleman, Sir," said the woman, - pointing to myself.

"Very well, good woman," said the stranger youth, whose tones were those of an Englishman, and whose voice, as he spoke, seemed touched with deep sorrow, "I will see you again, within an hour, at your house, and settle all matters." The woman, who had doubtless come to show him the church-yard, hereupon retired; and the young Englishman, coming up to me, grasped me kindly by the hand: "So, Sir," said he, "you have fulfilled my office here, which would to God I had been in time to do myself for my poor friend! You did not know him, I believe?"

"No," I answered.

"A nobler heart," returned the youth, " never beat in the frame of a man. He has been most unhappy, poor fellow, in his relatives."

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"I am sorrow to hear it," I could only reply.

you

"If I could honour you in any way," rejoined the youth, "which your heart cares for, beyond its own joy, in acting the part which have acted towards my poor friend, I would delight to honour you. You are at least entitled to some information about the deceased: I will give it to you in a way which will best show you his character. I have some letters here in my pocket, which I brought with me, that he might explain something to me, which they all, more or less, contain, relative to a piece of special business; from one of them I will read an extract, relative to his early history, and the miserable occasion on which he found his long-lost father, whom, after patient efforts to trace his parents, he was at length directed to seek in one of your villages in the south of

Scotland." The particular letter was selected, and the young Englishman, over the grave of his friend, read thus:

'I could have wept tears of blood, on finding things as they were with the unhappy old man who is indeed my father. I shall speak to you now as I would commune with my own heart; but yet it must be in mild terms, lest I be unfilial: is not this sorrowful work? From the very little which I knew of myself ere I came to this country, and from information which I have gathered within these two weeks from the old clergyman of this village, it appears that my mother died a few days after giving me birth, and that my uncle, who had never been satisfied with the marriage, took me, when very young, from my father, whose unhappy peculiarities led him readily to resign me, gave me my mother's name, and carried me with him to Holland, where he was a merchant. He was very kind to me in my youth; and, when I was of a proper age, he bought me a commission in the British army, in which I have served, as you know, for nearly ten years, and which, you also know, I was obliged to leave, in consequence of a wound in one of my ankles, which, subject to occasional swelling, has rendered me quite unfit for travel. My uncle died about three years ago, and left me heir to his effects, which were considerable. Nothing in his papers led me to suppose that my father might yet be living; but I learned the fact from a confidential friend of his, who communicated it to me, not very wisely, perhaps, since he could not tell me even my real name. Bitterly condemning my uncle's cruel policy, which had not allowed him to hold any intercourse whatever with my father, I hastened over to this country, with no certain hope of success in finding out whose I was, beyond what my knowledge that I bore my mother's name led me to entertain. Yet I had my own romance connected with the pursuit. I said to myself, that I might have young sisters, who should be glad to own me, unworthy though I was; I might bring comfort to a good old man, who, like another patriarch, was to fall

1

upon my neck and weep for joy like a little child. Every night I was on board, hasting to this country, I saw my dream-sisters, so kind, so beautiful. They washed my feet; they looked at the scars of my wounds; they were proud of me, for having been a soldier; and leant on my arm as we went to church, before all the people, who were lingering in the sunny church-yard: And the good old man, our father, went before us, often looking back to see that we were near behind, accommodating his step to show that he too was one of the party, though he did his best to appear self-denied.

After getting the clew, as mentioned in my last letter to you, I took a seat in the Mail, which I was told would pass at a little distance from the village whither I was bound. Would to God I had set out the day before, that so I might have prevented a horrid matter! The coach was stopped for me at a little bridge, that I might get out; the village, about a couple of miles off, was pointed out to me; and I was advised to follow a small footpath, which led along by a rivulet, as being the nearest way to the place in question. Twilight was now beginning to deepen among the elms that skirted the path into which I had struck; and, in this softest hour of nature, I had no other thought than that I was drawing near a home of peace. I know not whether the glen which I was traversing could have raised such indescribable emotions within me, had I not guessed that scenes were before me which my childhood must have often seen; but every successive revelation of the pass down which I was going-pool after pool ringed by night insects, and shot athwart on the surface by those diverging lines, so fine, so rapid, which may be the sport too of invisible insects-stream after stream, with its enamelled manes of cool green velvet, which anon twined themselves out of sight beneath the rooted brakes -one shy green nook in the bank after another, overwaved by the long pensile boughs of trees, and fringed with many a border of blent wild flowers,-all this made me start, as at the melancholy recurrence of long-forgotten dreams: And when the blue heron rose from the stream where it

had been wading, and with slow flagging wing crossed and re-crossed the water, and then went up the darkened valley to seek its lone haunt by the mountain spring, I was sure I had seen the very same scene, and the very same bird, some time in my life before. My dear Stanley, you cannot guess why I dwell so long on these circumstances: For it pierces my very heart with anguish to tell the coming contrast to my hopes, and to these peaceful accompaniments of outward nature! It must be told :—

'I had not walked more than a mile down the valley, when I heard feeble cries for assistance, as of some one in the last extremity, drowning in the stream. I made what haste I could, and, on getting round a sloping headland of the bank, which shot forward to the edge of the rounding water, I found myself close upon a company of fellows, habited like Christmas mummers, apparently amusing themselves with the struggles of a person in the water, who, ever as he secured a footing, and got his head above, was again pushed down by his cruel assailants. I was upon them ere they were aware, and reached one fellow, who seemed particularly active, a stout thwack with my ratan, from which, however, recovering, he took to his heels, followed by his associates. My next business was to relieve the object of their cruelty; but this was no easy task, for, being probably by this time quite exhausted, he had yielded to the current, and, ere I could reach him, was rolled down into a large black pool. He was on the point of sinking for ever, when I caught hold of him-good God! an old man!-by his grey hair, and drew him out upon the bank, where he lay to all appearance quite dead. Using such means as were in my power to assist in restoring suspended animation, I succeeded so well that ere long the poor old body showed symptoms of returning life. I looked round me in this emergency, but there was neither house nor living person to be seen; so what could I do, but take the bare-headed old man on my back, and carry him to the village, which I knew was not far off. And there, who should I find him to be, but my own father!