put the axe to the neck of Mackinlay. Of the rest of the Crown lawyers, it may be said that they looked as if a flock of sheep had got under their wigs.

Thus, at a single touch, did the scheme of the prosecution crumble into a mass of ruins.

It soon appeared, however, that there was one party in court who did not share the general amazement-the witness, the prisoner, and the counsel for the defence. These, among them, had constructed the thunderbolt, and its fall was to them the signal of their triumph. Little Francis Jeffrey, as he watched the effect of the blow, seemed to tower into the dimensions of Jupiter.

With Campbell's last answer to Lord Hermand, the case was practically finished. But Mr. Jeffrey, in order to perfect the overthrow of the Lord-Advocate, took care that Campbell should make to the court a full statement of the manner in which he had been tampered with by the Crown lawyers. The exposure was thoroughly crushing; and when it was proposed to call Sir William Rae, Sheriff of Edinburghshire, to corroborate the witness, the LordAdvocate objected, with the declaration that such a proceeding was altogether unnecessary.

Notwithstanding, however, the defection of the leading witness, he made an effort to go on with the case. But Makane and two or three others who were called had all been suddenly smitten with a total loss

of memory. Remembering nothing, they could tell nothing; and therefore, so far as they were concerned, the result was nothing.

Then the Lord-Advocate, haggard with chagrin and shame, confessed himself beaten, threw up the case, and in accordance with his directions, the jury returned as their verdict,

'Not Proven.'

The prisoners were therefore liberated from the bar, pallid with their long imprisonment, but thankful to get away with their heads on their shoulders.

CHAPTER XXXIII.

HINTS OF DESTINY.

A COMMON source of bitterness and sorrow to clever young men is the difference between their inward sense of superiority and the amount they possess of that outward power which they believe to be its proper complement. It takes years to unlearn the fallacy involved in this belief. There is a kind of greatness in thinking and feeling greatly; but it is only ignorance or weakness which imagines that every great thought or noble feeling ought to be re

presented by material symbols in the possession of the dreamer-as, for instance, a sceptre, a heap of riches, a fine estate, or the applausive recognition of the world.

Alan Dalziel was greatly afflicted by this incompatibility between his inward state and his outward fortune. With the desires and aspirations of a giant, he felt all the weakness of a pigmy. At different times, he had the thoughts, feelings, and desires of a king, a warrior, a statesman, a poet, and a lover, but he was only a cabbage gardener. Worse still, while he burned with a passionate love of freedom, he felt himself to be the prisoner of destiny, or rather of tyranny, for he dared hardly move from the little clachan without, in a sense, being exposed to capture by some agent of the Glasgow constabulary.

Thus, confined for the time to an atom of space, scorched and whirled by fiercely-contending emotions, and saddened by thoughts that streamed into infinity, his daily round was only a miserable attempt at life.

It was an unfortunate circumstance that there was no person in Millheugh to whom he could unbosom himself. He had plenty of acquaintances, but no companion. Even Mrs. Dalziel, good, and kind, and motherly as she was, could render him little assistance. Her counsels he never repelled, but he never confided to her any of his deeper secrets or

mental distresses. If he confessed them at all, it was mostly at no higher altar than that of naturemoon and stars, woods and waters, and the occasional storm.

So he went about his gardening avocations with no great spirit—a very incomplete piece of humanity. He heard occasionally how the trial of his companions was proceeding, but derived no comfort from the news; for so long as the trial was unfinished, he himself was practically under lock and key—so far, at least, as Glasgow was concerned, which was the one heavenly city to which his mind perpetually turned. Sometimes he moved about the woods and the streams, and often, as we have said, he visited Cadzow, but without finding the object of his search.

During one of his dreamy purposeless strolls, he happened to wander several miles south of the village, into the moory regions of the country. It was about midday when he reached a high-lying spot, from which he could see great ranges of strathy landscape. He saw the Clyde gleaming through several of its bosky windings. Farther away, his eye caught the hill of Tinto, its tap' shrouded in that traditional' mist,' in the midst of which there lies a 'kist' that contains a' cap,' in which the popular rhyme asserts there is a drap of something, probably mountain dew. Had Alan been in the vicinity of the mountain, he would probably have gone up to

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the mist, and, as the rhyme directs, opened the kist, taken up the cap, drank the drap, and laid it down on Tintoc tap.' As it was, being many miles distant from it, he sat down on a stone, gazed at the misty hill, and crooned in his mind the rhyme in which it has figured for generations.

Alan next turned his eyes in the direction of Glasgow; but as that city lay, as it still mainly lies, in a geological trough, all that the lover could see on the far horizon was a faint cloud of smoke, like the morning breath of some savage animal couched in its murky den. There was no comfort in the view; but the thought that beneath the unlovely smoke lived the loveliest lady in Lanarkshire, made him long for wings that he might flee away and be with her.

Like other young gentlemen of whom we have heard, Alan rose from his stony seat, and stretched his arms imploringly towards the city. But no change took place on the face of the landscape. The smoke did not clear away, and no vision of beauty arose in the dingy heavens. Then, as the manner is, he sank once more upon the cold stone, and buried his face in his hands.

At length he lifted his eyes and scanned the landscape in the hollow, for his ear had detected far away the faint tone of a bugle. As he watched, he saw a fox break cover at the corner of a wood, and in less