submitted to his examination; and, to do him justice, it was marked by much fairness and even liberality. He scratched his ear indeed repeatedly, on observing the balance which stood at the debit of Osbaldistone and Tresham in account with himself personally.

“It may be a dead loss,” he observed; “and, conscience! whate’er ane o’ your Lombard Street goldsmiths may say to it, it’s a snell ane in the Saut-Market o’ Glasgow. It will be a heavy deficit—a staff out o’ my bicker, I trow. But what then?—I trust the house wunna coup the crans for a’ that’s come and gane yet; and if it does, I’ll never bear sae base a mind as thae corbies in the Gallowgate—an I am to lose by ye, I’se ne’er deny I hae won by ye mony a fair pund sterling—Sae, an it come to the warst, I’se e’en lay the head o’ the sow to the tail o’ the grice.”¹

I did not altogether understand the proverbial arrangement with which Mr. Jarvie consoled himself, but I could easily see that he took a kind and friendly interest in the arrangement of my father’s affairs, suggested several expedients, approved several plans proposed by Owen, and, by his countenance and counsel, greatly abated the gloom upon the brow of that afflicted delegate of my father’s establishment.

As I was an idle spectator on this occasion, and, perhaps, as I showed some inclination more than once to return to the prohibited, and, apparently, the puzzling subject of Mr. Campbell, Mr. Jarvie dismissed me with little formality, with an advice to “gang up the gate to the college, where I wad find some chields could speak Greek and Latin weel,—at least they got plenty o’ siller for doing deil haet else, if they didna do that; and where I might read a spell o’ the worthy Mr. Zachary Boyd’s translation o’ the Scriptures—better poetry need nane to be, as he had been tell’d by them that kend, or suld hae kend, about sic things.” But he seasoned this dismission with a kind and hospitable invitation, “to come back and take part o’ his family chack, at ane preceesely—there wad be a leg o’ mutton, and, it might be, a tup’s head, for they were in season;” but, above all, I was to return at “ane o’clock preceesely—it was the hour he and the deacon his father aye dined at—they pat it aff for naething nor for naebody.”