spot, sinking down abruptly like a rock into a wild foreground of heath and forest, with a magnificent command of distant objects; but we saw nothing, that day, like the figure on the top of the hill.

After this, I lost sight of her for a long time. She was called suddenly home by the dangerous illness of her mother, who, after languishing for some months, died; and Mary went to live with a sister much older than herself, and richly married, in a manufacturing town, where she languished in smoke, confinement, dependence, and display (for her sister was a match-making lady, a manœuvrer), for about a twelvemonth. She then left her house and went into Wales-as a governess! Imagine the astonishment caused by this intelligence amongst us all; for I myself, though admiring the untaught damsel almost as much as I loved her, should certainly never have dreamed of her as a teacher. However, she remained in the rich baronet's family where she had commenced her vocation. They liked her, apparently; there she was; and again nothing was heard of her for many months, until, happening to call on the friends, at whose house I had originally met her, I espied her fair, blooming face, a rose amongst roses, at the drawing-room window, and instantly, with the speed of light, was met and embraced by her at the hall door.

There was not the slightest perceptible difference in her deportment. She still bounded like a fawn, and laughed and clapped her hands like an infant. She was not a day older, or graver, or wiser, since we parted. Her post of tutoress had, at least, done her no harm, whatever might have been the case with her pupils. The more I looked at her, the more I wondered; and after our mutual expressions of pleasure had a little subsided, I could not resist the temptation of saying, "So you are really a governess?" "Yes." "And you continue in the same family?" "Yes." "And you like your post?" "O yes!

yes!" "But, my dear Mary, what could induce you to go?" "Why, they wanted a governess; so I went." "But what could induce them to keep you?" The perfect gravity and earnestness with which this question was put, set her laughing; and the laugh was echoed back from a group at the end of the room, which I had not before noticed-an elegant man, in the prime of life, showing a port-folio of rare prints to a fine girl of twelve, and a rosy boy of seven, evidently his children. "Why did they keep me? Ask them," replied Mary, turning towards them with an arch smile. "We kept her to teach her ourselves," said the young lady. "We kept her to play cricket with us,” said her brother. "We kept her to marry," said the gentleman, advancing gayly to shake hands with me. "She was a bad governess perhaps; but she is an excellent wifethat is her true vocation." And so it is. She is, indeed, an excellent wife, and assuredly a most fortunate one. never saw happiness so sparkling or so glowing; never saw such devotion to a bride, or such fondness for a stepmother, as Sir. W. S. and his lovely children show to the sweet cousin Mary.

I

MISS MITFORD.

GORDON THE GYPSY.

In one of those drear midnights that were so awful to travellers in the Highlands soon after 1745, a man, wrapped in a large, coarse plaid, strode from a stone ridge on the border of Loch Lomond into a boat which he had drawn from its covert. He rowed resolutely, and alone, looking carefully to the right and left, till he suffered the tide to bear his little bark into a gorge or gulf, so narrow, deep,

and dark, that no escape but death seemed to await him. Precipices, rugged with dwarf shrubs and broken granite, rose more than a hundred feet on each side, sundered only by the stream, which a thirsty season had reduced to a sluggish and shallow pool. Then, poising himself erect on his staff, the boatman drew three times the end of a strong chain which hung among the underwood. In a few minutes, a basket descended from the pinnacle of the cliff, and, having moored his boat, he placed himself in the wicker carriage, and was safely drawn into a crevice high in the wall of rock, where he disappeared.

The boat was moored, but the adventurer had not observed that it contained another passenger. Underneath a plank laid artfully along its bottom, and shrouded in a plaid of the darkest grain, another man had been lurking more than an hour before the owner of the boat entered it, and remained hidden by the darkness of the night. His purpose was answered. He had now discovered what he had sacrificed many perilous nights to obtain-a knowledge of the mode by which the owner of Drummond's Keep gained access to his impregnable fortress unsuspected. He instantly unmoored the boat, and rowed slowly back across the loch to an island near the centre. He rested on his oars, and looked down on its transparent water. "It is there still," he said to himself; and, drawing close among the rocks, leaped on dry land. A dog, of the true shepherd's breed, sat waiting under the bushes, and ran before him till they descended together under an archway of stones and withered branches. "Watch the boat!" said the Highlander to his faithful guide, who sprang immediately away to obey him. Meanwhile his master lifted up one of the gray stones, took a bundle from underneath it, and equipped himself in such a suit as a trooper of Cameron's regiment usually wore, looked at the edge of his dirk, and returned to his boat.

That island had once belonged to the heritage of the

Gordons, whose ancient family, urged by old prejudices and hereditary courage, had been foremost in the illmanaged rebellion of 1715. One of the clan of Argyle then watched a favorable opportunity to betray the laird's secret movements, and was commissioned to arrest him. Under pretence of friendship, he gained entrance to his strong-hold in the isle, and concealed a posse of the king's soldiers at Gordon's door. The unfortunate laird leaped from his window into the lake, and his false friend, seeing his desperate efforts, threw him a rope, as if in kindness, to support him, while a boat came near. "That rope was meant for my neck," said Gordon ; "and I leave it for a traitor's." With these bitter words he sank. Cameron saw him, and the pangs of remorse came into his heart. He leaped himself into a boat, put an oar towards his drowning friend with real oaths of fidelity; but Gordon pushed it from him, and abandoned himself to death. The waters of the lake are singularly transparent near that isle, and Cameron beheld his victim gradually sinking, till he seemed to lie among the broad weeds under the waters. Once, only once, he saw, or thought he saw, him lift his hand as if to reach his; and that dying hand never left his remembrance. Cameron received the lands of the Gordon as a recompense for his political services, and with them the tower called Drummond's Keep, then standing on the edge of a hideous defile, formed by two walls of rock beside the lake. But from that day he had never been seen to cross the loch, except in darkness, or to go abroad without armed men. He had been informed that Gordon's only son, made desperate by the ruin of his father and the Stuart cause, had become the leader of a gypsy gang, the most numerous and savage of the many that haunted Scotland. He was not deceived. Andrew Gordon, with a body of most athletic composition, a spirit sharpened by injuries, and the vigorous genius created by necessity, had assumed dominion over two hundred ruf

fians, whose exploits in driving off cattle, cutting drovers' purses, and removing the goods brought to fairs or markets, were performed with all the audacious regularity of privileged and disciplined thieves. Cameron was the chosen and constant object of their vengeance. His keep or tower was of the true Scottish fabric, divided into three chambers; the highest of which was the dormitory, the second or middle served as a general refectory, and the lowest contained his cattle, which required this lodgment at night, or very few would have been found the next morning. His enemy frequented the fairs on the north side of Forth, well mounted, paying at inns and ferries like a gentleman, and attended by bands of gillies or young pupils, whose green coats, cudgels, and knives, were sufficiently feared by the visitors of Queensferry and Dumfermline. The gypsy chieftain had also a grim cur, of the true black-faced breed, famous for collecting and driving off sheep, and therefore distinguished by his own. name. In the darkest cleughs or ravines, or in the deepest snow, this faithful animal had never been known to abandon the stolen flock intrusted to his care, or to fail in tracing a fugitive. But as sight and strength failed him, the four-footed chieftain was deposed, imprisoned in a byre loft, and finally sentenced to be drowned. From this trifling incident arose the most material crisis of his patron's fate.

Between the years 1715 and 1745, many changes occurred in Captain Gordon and his enemy. The laird of Drummond's Keep had lost his only son in the battle of Preston Pans, and was now lingering, in a desolate old age, mistrusted by the government, and abhorred by the subdued Jacobites. Gordon's banded marauders had provoked the laws too far, and some sanguinary battles among themselves threatened the downfall of his own power. It was only a few nights after a desparate affray with the Linlithgow gypsys, that the event occurred which