doing so. When I tell you that the fortune of
which Mrs. Noel Vanstone has been deprived, is
entirely bequeathed to Admiral Bartram—and
when I add that Mr. George Bartram is generally
understood to be his uncle's heir—you will, I
think, acknowledge that I am not warning you
without a cause.

"Yours most truly,

"WILLIAM PENDRIL."

III.

FROM ADMIRAL BARTRAM TO MRS. DRAKE
(HOUSEKEEPER AT ST. CRUX).

"St. Crux, Jan. 10th, 1848.

"Mrs. Drake,—I have received your letter
from London, stating that you have found me
a new parlour-maid at last, and that the girl
is ready to return with you to St. Crux, when
your other errands in town allow you to come
back.

"This arrangement must be altered
immediately—for a reason which I am heartily sorry
to have to write.

"The illness of my niece, Mrs. Girdlestone—
which appeared to be so slight as to alarm none
of us, doctors included—has ended fatally. I
received this morning the shocking news of her
death. Her husband is said to be quite frantic
with grief. Mr. George has already gone
to his brother-in-law's, to superintend the last
melancholy duties—and I must follow him, before
the funeral takes place. We propose to take
Mr. Girdlestone away afterwards, and to try the
effect on him of change of place and new scenes.
Under these sad circumstances, I may be absent
from St. Crux a month or six weeks at least—
the house will be shut up—and the new servant
will not be wanted until my return.

"You will therefore tell the girl, on receiving
this letter, that a death in the family has caused
a temporary change in our arrangements. If
she is willing to wait, you may safely engage her
to come here in six weeks' time—I shall be back
then, if Mr. George is not. If she refuses, pay
her what compensation is right, and so have done
with her.

"Yours,

"ARTHUR BARTRAM."

IV.

FROM MRS. DRAKE TO ADMIRAL BARTRAM.

"Jan 11th.

"Honoured Sir,—I hope to get my errands
done, and to return to St. Crux to-morrow—but
write to save you anxiety, in case of delay.

"The young woman whom I have engaged
(Louisa by name) is willing to wait your time;
and her present mistress, taking an interest in
her welfare, will provide for her during the
interval. She understands that she is to enter on
her new service in six weeks from the present
date—namely, on the twenty-fifth of February
next.

"Begging you will accept my respectful
sympathy under the sad bereavement which has
befallen the family,

"I remain, Honoured Sir, your humble
servant, " SOPHIA DRAKE."

JOHN WILSON.

A BLUE-EYED golden-haired baby boy, aged
three, trotting off by his own small self to fish
in a wee burnie a good mile away from home,
and getting a bite, too, and a haul, " whapping
right over his head and far away a fish a quarter
of an ounce in weight, and at the very least two
inches long;" then carrying his prize home aloft
in triumph, with the first blush of cold blood on
his small " fumy" fingers, and silver scales under
his nails, where he scooped the crooked pin, his
only hook, out of the baggy's maw. An
unbreeched professor, mounted on a nursery-chair
by way of pulpit, and discoursing to his audience
of babies and nursery maids on the text, " There
was a fish, and it was a deil o' a fish, and it was
ill to its young anes." A poor wee Kit, lost in a
mist on the moor, where he had gone at sunrise
to look at a trap set for a " glede" (kite); and,
while returning home with an eel as long as
himself hanging over his shoulder—a poor wee
Kit sitting down on a stone in the storm and
crying for mortal fear, while the " small brown
moorland bird, as dry as a toast, hopped out of
its heather hole, and cheerily cheeped comfort;"
and a mother peaseweep, followed, " sight of
wonder! by three wee peaseweep, not three
days old, little bigger than shrew-mice, and
covered with blackish down, interspersed with
long white hair," passed by, glowering with her
large hazel eyes at wee Kit, as he was glowering
at her with his large blue eyes, and then,
with a " sudden shrill cry that thrilled to the
marrow of his cold back-bone, flapped and
fluttered herself away into the mist, while the little
black bits of down disappeared like devils into
the moss;" the dreadful bellowing of the red
bull which had tossed the tinker, and was now
roaming about for his lost cows, striking
redoubled terror to the fainting heart as it came
nearer and nearer, and visions of horns and hoofs
grew large and distinct; and then, the mist
clearing up—the frogs, who had been croaking,
suddenly silent, and sinking as if by magic
among the powheads—the red bull "cantering
over the hill, tail towards us"—and Rab Roger
and Lizzy Muir, honest bodies, sent out from the
Manse to find poor Kit's cold corpse, now
coming upon him shivering and drenched, but
alive and hearty—and the day ending with a
scold and a few " pawmies" from the minister,
hot whisky-toddy and bun, and, by way of
penance and punishment, the pawmies not being
enough, wee Kit bundled off to bed in the daytime,
there to meditate on the consequences of
a sunrise tramp over the moor to draw nightlines
from the Black Loch and look at traps set
for greedy gledes. These are the first three
pictures which MRS. GORDON gives us in
her delightful Memoirs of her father, newly
published at Edinburgh; sketches or outlines