IN 1821, the inhabitants of a wretched, but picturesque hamlet, near the glen of Dundronheil, on the north-western shore of Loch Mare, were reduced to the cabalistic number of seven. A severe winter, poverty and disease, had left the two score huts, which constituted the town, almost without inmates. Of the remnant,

James Maclune was of the gentlest kin, and the richest man among them, inasmuch as he was not quite a beggar, for he possessed a small sum of money, a strong box of valueless parchment deeds, and an invaluable Scotch terrier, who conducted himself towards his master with the inborn courtesy of noble blood, and with the domestic fidelity of "the ancient usage of the antique world." The march of intellect in bipeds has long expelled this fashion of service; but we have good authority for the assertion, that canine quadrupeds are, at least, a century behind the human race in worldly tendencies, and may still be trusted to fetch, to carry, and defend.

Born heir-presumptive to a sufficient estate, Maclune had been better bred, schooled, and nurtured than his patrimony warranted. At an advanced period of life, his uncle, who had adopted him, became feeble in body and mind, and, therefore, after the fashion of David, took unto himself a nurse and wife in the person of Dolly the dairy

maid. This lady soon put the expectations of the nephew in the back-ground of the picture, and presently they vanished altogether, as several chubby, tadpole-looking animals were brought into existence. Maclune's patrimony, about the same time, fell into a galloping consumption, which terminated fatally. Bereft of all, he turned author, and everything else he could turn, but the dreams of his youth ceased to visit him, and hope sickened, withered, and died its natural death of disappointment. Disgusted with his unsuccessful experiments, and with the vicissitudes of social life, he retired, with his only friend, Elphin, to Dundronheil, where his misanthropy expended itself in bettering the condition of the few resident fishermen (the most wretched of the serfs of poverty), and in refusing to commune with anything but his dog, and the rocks and waters that, on three sides, surrounded his dwelling-place. But when disease and distress were more than usually rife in the hamlet, he departed from his morose habits, and, by his slight knowledge of medicine, and his scanty means of relief, brought hope to many a sick bed, and miserable family. Emigration was then, as now, the popular fallacy of the day. Want of the means of subsistence had weakened or destroyed the attachment of the inhabitants to their locality. Several families begged their way to seaports, and left their native land for ever. Maclune had listened to, and encouraged their schemes; his own imagination, influenced by the published accounts of the fertility of Southern Africa, and its facile abundance of food, at length determined him to negotiate for the six remaining individuals and himself a passage in the first fine vessel bound for the Cape. Having settled this im

portant matter, and bidden a long farewell to the glens and waterfalls of Dundronheil, he had nothing left for consideration but the contents of his iron box and little terrier. The first was useless in the voyage, although dear to him as containing evidences of his gentle blood; the comradeship of the latter was his only solace.

While Maclune's companions in misfortune were taking solemn leave of their Lares and Penates, a feeling, compounded of compunction and presentiment, caused him to run his eye over the contents of the iron safe. As he lifted sheepskin after sheepskin, Elphin standing over them as guard and keeper of the records, the thought of burying the documents in the Cavern of the Glen suddenly entered his mind. As evidences of his identity, should he ever return to "bonnie Scotland," or should the dairymaid's brood be drowned in her own skim-milk, they might be useful, and safer, thus interred, than exposed to the chances of wind and wave. Elphin in attendance, he carried the padlocked box up the wild rocks, and down the darkened glen, to the huge cavern underneath. Through a winding passage, hollowed out by some strange convulsion of nature, he came to a curious vaulted chamber, not much bigger than a dog's kennel, where he had once crept for shelter from a storm. Here, in a rocky niche, he stowed his fancied treasure, and, on his return home, he made a memorandum of the same, which, signed and sealed, he resolved to leave in the hands of a London lawyer. A few days after, he embarked, with Elphin and the six fishermen, in the "Gernoch," Captain Hamilton, for the "bourne from whence few travellers return."

Walk,

In 1826, worn with fatigue and hardships, but somewhat richer in the gifts of fortune, or rather industry, Maclune divided the half of his worldly goods among his six comrades, who had been his labourers, and, again an exile, turned his back upon Boors, Caffres, and Hottentots. His faithful terrier, Elphin, had now grown grey in his service, but was still active and vigorous, and gave promise of many years of useful life. With his dog, then, Maclune returned to England; and at the inn, at Plymouth, on the first day of his arrival, by that which seemed to him a peculiar interposition of providence, he chanced to read, in "The Times" newspaper, an advertisement, purporting that all claimants to M— estate, were to apply to Alex. Court, Edinbro'. A train of long dormant hopes revived; he travelled by the speediest conveyance to the Second Athens, and obtained admittance to the Scotch advocate. Here he first learnt the deaths of his uncle and of his sickly progeny; and the union of Dolly, the dairymaid, with the groom of her defunct spouse. But it was necessary to prove his identity, and to produce all those documents which had been left him (his only legacy) by his father. He resolved to reinstate his fallen fortunes to the utmost, and to restore the consequence of his decayed family. Conversation, on many necessary topics, with his lawyer, at length brought back to a fatigued memory the iron box that he had had the prudence to preserve, and the carelessness from that time to forget. However, in middle age, present events make less durable impression on our minds than the long past occurrences of early years; and Maclune felt certain of discovering the

the papers,

place of concealment, hoping that, among those requisite to establish his claim might be numbered. He set out on his journey into Rosshire, turning aside to pay one visit to an aged Dominie, whom he had promised to see should fortune ever again smile on him. As he pictured the pleasure of the old tutor in welcoming his pupil, a softer dream, swept away, for ten long bitter years, by the ever flowing tides of distress and misanthropy-a softer dream, akin to an expectation and a hope, revisited his spirit. There was a clergyman's widow living in the same village with the Dominie, who owned a daughter Kate. Maclune had sometimes thought sorrow might change its nature, and turn to joy, could he transplant that modest harebell, from the wild hedgerow where it grew, to his own bosom. But bitterness had long obliterated hope, and almost recollection, till the new revolution of fortune's wheel brought again to his spirit his early wishes. So he diverged to Tinafidine, and found both his good old master, and his early love, pretty much unchanged by the rolling on of old Time's wave. Sooth to say, Kate, at five and twenty, in her matured bloom of maiden modesty, was as beautiful as ever, and the old Dominie still alive, though scarcely so to any vivid impressions. Taking leave of these, his only friends, he repaired to Dundronheil as quickly as he could, but here, though no long period had elapsed since he had roamed over these fastnesses of nature, he scarcely recognised the place, so doubly wild and desolate had it become. The ruins of the scattered hamlet were overgrown with moss and lichens. pathways, and rude garden enclosures, all had disappeared; not a trace of recent dwelling was left. Even when he

Footsteps and