Wilson's Tales of the Borders and of Scotland Volume XII Part 1

Wilson's Tales of the Borders and of Scotland.

by Various.

Volume 12

THE SCOTTISH HUNTERS OF HUDSON'S BAY.

The gloom of a boisterous winter evening was settling over one of the wild, inhospitable tracts which lie to the north of the St Lawrence. The earth, far as the eye could reach, was covered, to the depth of many feet, by a continuous sheet of frozen snow; over which the bellying clouds, heavily charged with the materials of a fresh storm, hung in terrible array, fold beyond fold, as they descended on every side to mingle with the distant horizon. On the one hand, a frozen lake, deeply buried, like all the rest of the landscape, stretched its flat, unvaried surface for leagues along the waste; on the other, a winding sh.o.r.e, covered with stunted trees and bushes, alternately advanced into the level, in the form of low, long promontories, or retired into little hollow bays, edged with rock, and overhung by thickets of pine. All was sublimely wild and desolate. The piercing north wind went whistling in sudden gusts along the frozen surface of the lake, das.h.i.+ng against each other the stiff, brittle branches of the underwood, and shaking off their icicles, or whirling the lighter snow into huge columns, that ever and anon went stalking along the waste like giants, and seemed at times to thrust their foreheads into the very clouds. Not a single human habitation--not so much as the wigwam of an Indian, or aught that could give evidence of even the occasional visits of man--could be seen in the whole frozen circle, from the centre to the horizon. All seemed alike uninhabitable and uninhabited--a dreary unpeopled desert, the undisputed domain of solitude and winter.

And yet, on this dismal evening, the landscape was enlivened by two human figures. They were mounted on a rude sledge, drawn by four large dogs, that now, as the evening began to darken, were urging their way at full speed across one of the wider bays of the lake. The keen, penetrating wind blew right ahead, so intensely chill that it felt to the naked hand like a stream of ice; and the travellers, who were seated, with their backs to the blast, on the front part of the car, and who from time to time half turned their heads to direct the course of the dogs, drew closer and closer together as they felt their limbs stiffening, and a drowsy torpor stealing over all their faculties, under the deadening influence of the cold. They were dressed from head to foot in the skins of wild animals, with hoods, like those worn by the Esquimaux, projecting over their faces, and long strips of some thick, coa.r.s.e fur wrapped in a spiral fas.h.i.+on round their limbs. One of them--a robust, dark-complexioned young man, rather above the middle size--had an Indian blanket bound round his shoulders; the other--who, though tall and well-made, was of a rather slighter form, and much less deeply bronzed by the climate--was closely enveloped in the folds of a Scottish plaid.

"I am afraid, Sandy, it's all over with us," said Innes Cameron, the fairer and handsomer of the two; "I have been dead asleep for the last ten minutes--ah, me! and dreaming of Scotland, too, and of one I shall never, never see more. Do you think there can be any chance of our yet reaching the log-house?"

"I have been more than half asleep, too," said Sandy Munro, the more robust traveller, "and my feet are ice to the ankles; but, if we can hold out for barely one quarter-of-an-hour longer, we are safe. Pine Creek Point is quite at hand--see how it stretches black across the snow yonder, not four hundred yards away; and, hearken! you may hear the wind whistling through the branches. There is a little bay beyond it, and the log-house is at the bottom of the bay. Just strive and keep up for a few minutes longer, Innes, and we shall get over this night with all the rest."

The sledge reached the promontory, and entered the wood. It was thick and dark; and there was a rustling and crackling on every side, as the dogs went bounding among the underwood--their ears and tails erected, and opening from time to time in quick, sharp barkings, sure indications that they deemed themselves near the close of their journey. The trees began to open; and, descending an abrupt ice declivity, the travellers found themselves on the edge of a narrow creek, that went winding into the interior, between steep banks laden with huge piles of snow, which, hollowed by the blast into a thousand fantastic forms, hung bellying over the level. A log-house, buried half-way to the eaves in front, and overtopped by an immense wreath behind--resembling some hapless vessel in the act of foundering--occupied an inflection of the bank opposite the promontory; and in a few minutes the travellers had crossed the creek, and stood fronting the door.

"Ah, no kindly smoke comes frae the lum, Innes," said Sandy, leaping out of the car; "all dark, too, as midnight at Yule; but we maun just bestir ourselves, and get up a blaze. Do exert yourself, my bonny man, or we shall perish yet. Unfasten the dogs, and be sure you hang up the harness out of their reach, or the puir hungry wratches will eat it up, every snap, afore morning. Unfasten the door, too, and get out our driest skins and driest tinder; and I, meanwhile, shall provide you with brushwood aneugh to keep up a bonfire till morning."

He seized an axe, and began to ply l.u.s.tily among the underwood; while his neighbour unharnessed the dogs, and, clearing the door, entered the log-house, which soon began to throw up a thick steam through the snow.

We shall take the liberty of following him. The apartment was about ten feet square; the walls formed of undressed logs, and the roof of s.h.i.+ngles. The snow peeped in a hundred different places through the interstices; and a mult.i.tude of huge icicles, the effects of a late partial thaw, hung half-way down from the ceiling to the floor, and now glistened in the light, as the flames rose gaily on the hearth. The dogs were whining and pawing in a corner, impatient for their evening repast.

In a few minutes Sandy had half-filled the apartment with brushwood, and then set himself to a.s.sist his companion, who seemed but indifferently skilled in the culinary art, in preparing supper, which consisted mostly of frozen fish and biscuit, relished by a dram of excellent rum. It was soon smoking on the floor, and, with the a.s.sistance of the dogs, soon discussed; and the two fur-gatherers sat indulging in the genial heat, with the long dark evening before them, and neither of them in the least disposed to retire to the bed of brushwood and skins which they had formed on the floor, immediately behind them.

"We are strange, changeable creatures," said Sandy--"the bairn sticks to us a' life lang; and, if we dinna laugh, and cry just in the ae breath, it's no that the feelings dinna vary, but that the pride o' consistency winna always let us show what we feel. Little mair nor an hour ago, we were baith peris.h.i.+n in the bitter cauld, half resigned to die, that we might escape frae our misery, and noo here we are as happy as if there were no such things as death or hards.h.i.+p i' the warld. Man, what a bonny fire! I could maist forget that I was a puir Hudson's Bay fur-gatherer, and that kindly Scotland was four thousand miles awa."

"What," said his companion, "could have induced a steady, sensible fellow like you, Sandy, to indenture with the company? 'Tis easy to divine what brought most of our comrades here--they resemble David's a.s.sociates in the Cave of Adullam; but you, who could have been neither in debt nor distress, and who are always so much the reverse of discontented--I could never guess what brought you. Come, now, let us have your story; the night is long and tedious, and I know not how we could pa.s.s it to better purpose."

"But I do," replied Sandy. "My story is nae story ava. I am but a rude man amang rude men like mysel; but you, Innes, what could hae brought you here? You are a gentleman and a scholar, though ye hae but sma'

skill, maybe, in niffering brandy and gla.s.s beads for the skins o'

foumarts; and your story, no a vera gay one, I fear, will hae a' the interest o' an auld ballad. It's but fair, however, that ye should hae mine, such as it is, first. But draw just a wee bittie out o' the draught; for there's a cauld, bitter wind soughin ben frae the door--and only hear how the storm rages arout!

"There's a curious prejudice," continued Sandy, "among our country folks--and, I suppose, among the folks o' every other country besides--against some particular handicrafts. It's foolish in maist cases. The souters o' Selkirk were gallant fellows; and, had a' our Scottish knights fought half as weel at Flodden, our country would hae lost a battle less; and yet ye canna but ken how our auld poets o' the time--Dunbar, and Kennedy, and Davie Lindsay--ridicule the puir souters.

They say that, once on a time, the vera deil himsel wadna keep company wi' ane o' them, till he had first got the puir man to wash himsel. Now, the prejudice against tailors is hardly less strong in our ain days; and yet a tailor may be a stalwart fellow, and bear a manly heart. I'm no sure, had it no been for this prejudice, that I would now hae been a fur-gatherer on the sh.o.r.es o' Hudson's Bay."

"Would to heaven," exclaimed his companion, interrupting him, "that I had been bred a tailor! I'm mistaken if any such prejudice would have sent me across the Atlantic."

"We can be a' wise enough on our neebor's weaknesses, Innes," said Sandy; "but to the story.

"I come frae a seaport town in the north o' Scotland, no twenty miles frae Inverness, your ain bonny half-Hieland, half-Lowland home. My father, who had married late in life, was an old grey-headed man from the time I first remember him. He had a sma' family; and, in his anxiety to see us a' doing for oursels, I was apprenticed to a tailor in my tenth year. Weel do I mind wi' what a disconsolate feeling I left the twa cows I used to herd on a bonny brae-side speckled wi' gowans and b.u.t.tercups, to be crumpled down on the corner o' a board hardly bigger than an ap.r.o.n, amang shreds and patches o' a' the colours o' the rainbow, wi' an outlook through a dusty window on the side wa's o' an auld warehouse. And then my comrades were such queer fallows, fu o' a droll, little, wee sort o' conceit, that could ride on the neck o' a new b.u.t.ton, and a warld o' fas.h.i.+ous bits o' tricks, naething sae guid as the tricks o' a jackanapes, but every grain as wicked; and aften hae they played them aff on the puir simple laddie. There are nane o' our craftsfolks, Innes, but hae some peculiarity to mark them that grows up oot o' their profession; and there's nae cla.s.s mair marked than the cla.s.s I belong to."

"I have read Lamb on the Melancholy of Tailors," said Innes, "and remember laughing heartily at the quaint humour of some of his remarks; but I never wasted a thought on the subject after laying him down."

"Ah, Lamb, wi' a' his bonny, bairn-like humour and simplicity," said Sandy, "is but a c.o.c.kney feelosopher after a', and kent naething o' the matter. Melancholy o' tailors, forsooth! Why, man, a Hieland tailor is aye the heartiest c.o.c.k, and has aye the maist auld stories i' the parish. But I maun gie you the feelosophy o' the thing at some ither time.--I got on but ill wi' my companions," continued Sandy; "and the royitous laddies outside used to jibe me wi' no being a man sax years afore I ceased being a boy. Is it no hard that tailors should lose the reputation o' manhood through a stupid misconception o' the sense o' an auld-warld author? He tells us the tailor canna mak a man, just in the spirit that Burns tells us a king canna mak an honest man. And, instead o' the pith o' the remark being brought to bear on the beau and the c.o.xcomb, wha never separate the human creature frae his dress, it's brought, oot o' sheer misapprehension, to bear against the puir artisan."

"I see, Sandy," said Innes, with a smile, "you are still influenced by _l'esprit de corps_. If you once get back to Scotland, you will take to your old trade, and die a master tailor."

"I wish to goodness I were there to try!" replied Sandy. "But the story lags wofully. I got on as I best could--longing sadly, i' the lang bonny days o' simmer, to be oot amang the rocks o' the Sutors, or on the sea, and in winter, thinking o' the Bay o' Udoll, wi' its wild ducks and its swans, and o' the gran fun I could hae amang them wi' my auld pistol--whan my master employed an auld ae-legged sodger to work wi' him as a journeyman. He was a real fine fellow, save that he liked the drap drink a wee owre weel, maybe; and he had wandered owre half the warld.

He had been in Egypt wi' Abercromby, and at Corunna wi' Moore, and o'er a' Spain and at Waterloo wi' Wellington, and in mony a land and in mony a fight besides; and noo he had come hame wi' a snug pension, and a budget o' first-rate fine stories, that made the ears tingle and the heart beat higher, to live and die amang his freends. Oh, the delight I hae taen in that man's company! Why, Innes, at pension time, though I never cared muckle for drink for its ain sake, I hae listened to his stories i' the public-house till I hae felt my head spinnin round like a tap, and my feet hae barely saired to carry me hame. I hae charged Bonaparte's Invincibles wi' him, fifty and fifty times, and helped him to carry aff Moore frae beside the thorn bush where he fell, and scaled wi' him the breach at St Sebastian; and, in short, sae filled was I wi'

the spirit o' the sodger, that, had the wars no been owre, I would hae broken my indentures, and gane awa to break heads and see foreign countries. As it was, however, I learned to like my employment ten times waur nor ever, and to break a head, noo and then, amang the town prentices. Spite o' my close, in-door employment, I had grown stalwart and strong; and I mind, on ae occasion, beating twa young fallows who had twitted me on being but a _ninth_. Weel, the term o' my apprentices.h.i.+p cam till an end at last; and, flingin awa my thimble wi'

a jerk, and sendin my needle after it like an arrow, I determined on seeing the warld. My crony, the auld veteran, advised me to enter the army. I was formed baith in mind and body, he said, for a sodger; and if I took but care--a thing he never could do himsel--I micht dee a serjeant. But whatever love I micht hae for a guid fecht, I had nane for the parade, and my thorough dread and detestation o' the halberds o'er-mastered ony little ambition I micht hae indulged in when I dreamed o' a battle. I thocht o' a voyage to Greenland--o' gangin a-sodgerin wi'

Lord Byron to Greece--o' emigratin to New South Wales or the Cape--o'

turnin a farmer in the backwoods--o' indenturin for a Jamaica over-seer--o' goin oot to Mexica for a miner--ay, and o' fifty ither plans besides--whan an advertees.e.m.e.nt o' the Hudson's Bay Company caught my notice, and determined me at once. I needna tell ye what the directors promised to active young men: a paradise o' a country to live in--the fun o' huntin and fis.h.i.+n frae Monday to Sat.u.r.day nicht for our only wark--and pocketfus o' money for our pay. I blessed my stars, and closed wi' the agent at once. And now, here I am, Innes, in the seventh year o' my service, no that meikle disposed to contemn my auld profession, and mair nor half tired o' huntin, fis.h.i.+n, and seein the warld. But just twa months mair, my boy, and I am free. And now, may I no expect your story in turn?"

The wind, which had been rising since nightfall, now began to howl around the log-house and through the neighbouring woods, like the roar of the sea in a storm. There was an incessant creaking among the beams of the roof, and the very floor at times seemed to rise and fall under the foot, like the deck of a vessel which, after having lain stranded on the beach, has just begun to float. The storm, which had been so long impending, burst out in all its fury, and for some time the two fur-gatherers, impressed by a feeling of natural awe, sat listening to it in silence. The sounds rose and fell by intervals; at times sinking into a deep, sullen roar, when all was comparatively still around; at times swelling into thunder. In a pause of the blast, Sandy rose and flung open the door. Day had sunk more than two hours before, and there was no moon, but there was a strong flare of greenish-coloured light on the snow, that served to discover the extreme dreariness of the scene; and through a _bore_ in the far north, resembling, as Sandy said, the opening of a dark lantern, he could see that, beyond the cloud, the heavens were all a-flame with the aurora borealis. Earth and sky seemed mingled; the snow, loose and fluctuating, and tossing its immense wreaths to the hurricane, resembled the sea in a storm when the waves run highest; the ice, though so deeply covered before, lay in some places dark and bare, while in others, beneath the precipices, the drift had acc.u.mulated over it to the depth of many fathoms. Again the blast came roaring onwards with the fury of a tornado, and Sandy shut and bolted the door.

"Ane o' the maist frightfu nichts, Innes," he said, "I ever saw in America. It will be weel if we're no baith buried a hunder feet deep afore mornin, wi' the log-house for our coffin. The like happened, about twenty years syne, at Badger Hollow, where twa puir chields were covered up till their skulls had grown white aneath their bannets. But though alane, and in the desert, we're no oot o' the reach o' Providence yet."

"Ah no, my poor friend!" said Innes; "I do not feel, in these days, that life is highly desirable; but nature shrinks from dissolution, and I am still fain to live on. A poet, Sandy, would view our situation at present with something like complacency; but I am afraid he would deem your story, amusing as it is, little in keeping with the scene around us, and a night so terrible as this. I can scarcely ask a tailor if he remembers the little bit in 'Thalaba,' where the cave of the Lapland sorceress is described? The long night of half-a-year has closed, and wastes of eternal snow are stretching around; while in the midst, beside her feeble light, that seems lost in the gloom of the cavern, the sorceress is seated, ever drawing out and out from the revolving distaff the golden thread of destiny."

"I mind better," replied Sandy, "Jamie Hogg's wild story o' my brother craftsman, Allan Gordon, and how he wintered at the Pole in the cabin o'

a whomilt Greenlandman, wi' Nannie and a rum cask for his companions.

Dear me, how the roarins o' the bears outside used to amaze the puir chield every time he was foolish aneugh to let himsel grow sober! But gudesake, Innes, what's that?"

There was something sufficiently frightful in the interruption. A fearfully-prolonged howl was heard outside, mingling with the hurricane, and, in a moment after, the snorting and pawing of some animal at the door. Sandy s.n.a.t.c.hed up his musket, hastily examined the pan, to ascertain that his powder had escaped the damp, and, setting it on full c.o.c.k, pointed it to the place whence the noises proceeded. Innes armed himself with a hunting-spear. The sounds were repeated, but in a less frightful tone: they were occasioned evidently by a dog whining for admittance. "Some puir brute," said Sandy, "who has lost his master."

And, opening the door, a large Newfoundland dog came rus.h.i.+ng into the hut. With more than brute sagacity, he flung himself at the feet of the fur-gatherers, as if imploring protection and a.s.sistance; and then, springing up and laying hold of the skirts of Sandy's blanket, he began to tug him violently towards the door.

"Let us follow the animal," said Innes; "it may be the means of rescuing a fellow-creature from destruction; his master, I am convinced, is peris.h.i.+ng in the snow."

"I shall not fail you, Innes," exclaimed Sandy; and, hastily wrapping their plaids around them, and s.n.a.t.c.hing up, the one a loaded musket, the other a bottle of spirits, the fur-gatherers plunged fearlessly into the storm and the darkness.

A greenish-coloured light still glimmered faintly from the north, through the thick drift and the falling snow, too faint, indeed, to enable them to catch the outlines of surrounding objects, but sufficient to show them the dog moving over the ice a few yards before them, like a little black cloud. They followed hard in his track towards the bottom of the creek. The steep banks on either hand contracted as they advanced, till at length they could see their s.h.a.gged summits high above them in the darkness, and could hear the storm raging in the pines, though it had become comparatively calm in the shelter below. The creek at length terminated in a semicircular recess, surrounded by a steep wall of precipices. The dog bounded forward to a fissure in the rock--and there, at the edge of a huge wreath of snow, which half shut up the entrance, lay what seemed, in the uncertain light, the dead body of a man. The dog howled piteously over it, breathed hard in the face, and then looked up imploringly to the fur-gatherers. Innes leaped over the wreath, followed by Sandy, and, on raising up the body, found, though the extremities were stiff and cold as the ice on which it lay, that life was not yet extinct.

"Some unlucky huntsman," said Sandy; "we maun carry him, Innes, to the log-house; life is sweet even among the deserts o' Hudson's Bay."

The peris.h.i.+ng hunter muttered a few broken syllables, like a man in the confusion of a dream. "It grows dark, Catherine," he said, "and I am sick at heart, and cold."

"Puir, puir fallow!" exclaimed Sandy--"he's thinkin o' his wife or sweetheart; but he'll no perish this time, Innes, if we can help it.

Pity, man, for the car and dogs; but minutes are precious, and we maun just lug him wi' us as we best may."

Rolling their plaids around the almost lifeless stranger, the fur-gatherers bore him away over the ice, the dog leaping and barking with very joy before them; and in less than half-an-hour they had all reached the log-house.

The means of restoring suspended animation, with which the casualties of so many Hudson's Bay winters had made Sandy well acquainted, were resorted to on this occasion with complete success; and the stranger gradually recovered. He proved to be one of the most trusted and influential of the company's managers--a native of Scotland, and much loved and respected among the inferior retainers of the settlement, for an obliging disposition and great rect.i.tude of principle. He was a keen sportsman, and had left his place of residence in the morning, on a solitary hunting excursion, accompanied only by his dog. But, trusting to his youth and strength, the enthusiasm of the hunter had drawn him mile after mile from home; and, on the breaking out of the storm, he had lost his way among the interminable bays and creeks of the lake. On his recovery, he was profuse in his expressions of grat.i.tude, and meant all that he said. He was, perhaps, not much afraid to die, he remarked, but then he had many inducements to live, and there were more than himself who had a stake in his life, and who would feel grateful to his preservers.

"Compose yourself," said Innes; "you have been strangely tried to-night, and your spirits are still much flurried. Set yourself to sleep, for never had man more need; and my companion and I shall watch beside you during the night. Remember you are our patient, and entirely under our control." The manager good-humouredly acquiesced in the prescription, and in a few minutes after was fast asleep.

"Now, Innes," said Sandy, "as there's to be no bed for us to-night, you maunna forget that you're pledged to me for your story. Remember, my bonny man, our bargain when ye got mine."

"I do remember," replied Innes; "but I well know you will be both tired and sleepy ere I have done."

"I have long had a liking for you, Sandy," continued Innes--"I knew you from the first to be a man of a different cast from any of our fellows; and, ever since I saw you take part with the poor Indian, whom the two drunken Irishmen attempted to rob of his rum and his wife, I have wished for your friends.h.i.+p. It is not good for man to be alone, and I have been much too solitary since I entered with the company. You were, when in Scotland, the victim of a silly prejudice against a humble, but honest calling, but you could have lived in it, notwithstanding, had not a love for wandering drawn you abroad. I, on the contrary--thought like the hare with many friends, I was a favourite with every one--was literally starved out of it. My father was a gentleman farmer, not thirty miles from Inverness, whom the high war prices of cattle and grain had raised from comparative poverty to sudden, though short-lived, affluence. No man could be more sanguine in his hopes for his children. He had three boys, and all of us were educated for the liberal professions, in the full belief that we were all destined to rise in the world, and become eminent. Alas! my brother, the divine, died of a broken heart, a poor over-toiled usher in an English academy; my brother, the doctor, perished in Greenland, where he had gone as the surgeon of a whaler, after waiting on for years in the hope of some better appointment; and here am I, a lawyer--prepared to practise, as soon as we get courts established among the red men of Hudson's Bay. But I antic.i.p.ate. I am not sure nature ever intended that I should stand high as a scholar; but I was no trifler, and so pa.s.sed through the cla.s.ses with tolerable _eclat_. I am not at all convinced, either, that I possess the capabilities of a first-rate lawyer; but I am certain I have seen men rise in the world with not more knowledge, and with, perhaps, even less judgment to direct it. What I chiefly wanted, I suspect, was a genius for the knavish parts of the profession. Will you believe me when I say I have known as much actual crime committed in the office of a pettifogging country lawyer, as I ever saw tried in a sheriff court. Oh, what finished rascality have I not seen skulking under the shelter of the statute-book!--what remorseless blackening of character, for the sake of a paltry fee!--what endless breaches of promise!--what shameless betrayals of trust!--what reckless waste of property! Sandy Munro, I am a poor Hudson's Bay fur-gatherer, and can indulge in no other hope than that I shall one day lay my bones at the side of some nameless creek or jungle; but rather that, a thousand, thousand times, than affluence, and influence, and respectability--ay, respectability--through the wretched means by which I have seen all these secured!"

"You are an honest chield, Innes," said Sandy, grasping him by the hand.

"I have had a regard for you ever since I first saw you; and the mair I ken o' you the mair my respect rises."

"My father," continued Innes, "was respectably connected; I had a turn for dress, a tolerably genteel figure, and was fond of female society; and, during the four years I served with the lawyer in Inverness, I found myself a welcome guest in all the more respectable circles of the place. Scarcely a tea-drinking or dancing party was got up among the _elite_ of the burgh, but I was sure of an invitation. I danced, played on the flute, handed round the tea and the sweetmeats--all _par excellence_--and was quite an adept in the art of speaking a great deal without saying anything. In short, I became a most accomplished trifler--an effect, perhaps, of my very imperfect love of my profession.

The men who rise to eminence, you know, rarely begin their course as fine fellows; and were it not for a circ.u.mstance to which I owe more of my happiness and more of my misery than to any other, I would have had to attribute my failure in life less to an untoward destiny than to the dissipation of this period. But I was taught diligence by the very means through which most young people are _un_taught it. I fell in love. There was a pretty, simple la.s.sie, the daughter of one of the bailies of the place, whom I used frequently to meet with in our evening parties, and with whose appearance I was mightily taken from the moment I first saw her. She united, in a rare degree, all the elegance of the young lady with all the simplicity of the child; and, with better sense than falls to the share of nineteen-twentieths of her s.e.x, was more devoid than any one I ever knew of their characteristic cunning. You have heard, I daresay, that young ladies are anxious about getting husbands; but, trust me, it is all a mistake. The anxiety is too natural a one to be experienced by so artificial a personage as the mere young lady. It is not persons but things she longs after--settlements, not sweethearts. I have had a hundred young-lady friends, who liked my youth and gentility, and who used to dance, and romp, and chat with me, with all the good-will possible, but who thought as little of me as a sweetheart as if I were one of themselves. Thoughts of that tender cla.s.s were to be reserved for some rich Indian, with a complexion the colour of a drum-head, and a liver like a plum-pudding. This bonny la.s.sie, however, was born--poor thing!--with natural feelings. We met, and learned to like one another; we sang and laughed together; talked of scenery and the _belles lettres_; and, in short, lost our hearts to one another ere we so much as dreamed that we had hearts to lose. You must be in love, Sandy, ere all I could tell you could give you adequate notions of the happiness I have enjoyed with that bonny, kind-hearted la.s.sie. Love, I have said, taught me diligence. I applied to my profession anew, determined to be a lawyer, and the husband of Catherine. I waded through whole tomes of black-letter statutes, studied my way over forty folios of decisions, and did what I suppose no one ever did before--read Grigor on the Game-laws. Not half-a-dozen pract.i.tioners in the country could draw out a deed of settlement with equal adroitness--not one succeeded in putting fewer double meanings into a will. My master used to consult me on conveyancing; and when, at the expiry of my term, I left his office and set up for myself, you will not wonder it was with the hope that my at least average acquirements would secure for me an average portion of success. You will see how that hope was realised.