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skin, as saft as doe-leather," which made the sling and cover of his fowling-piece, he left the apartment abruptly.

The jagger, with those green goggling and gain-descrying kind of optics, which we have already described, continued gazing for an instant after the customer, who treated his wares with such irreverence.

Swertha also looked after him with some

surprise. "The callant's in a creel," quoth

she.

"In a creel!" echoed the pedlar, " he will be as wowf as ever his father was. To guide in that gate a bargain that cost him four dollarsvery, very Fifish, as the east-country fisherfolks say."

"Four dollars for that green rag!" said Swertha, catching at the words which the jagger had unwarily suffered to escape-❝ that was. a bargain indeed! I wonder whether he is the greater fule, or you the mair rogue, Bryce Snailsfoot."

"I didna say it cost him preceesely four dollars," said Snailsfoot; "but if it had, the lad's

siller's his ain, I hope; and he is auld eneugh to make his ain bargains. Mair by token, the gudes are weel worth the money, and mair."

"Mair by token," said Swertha coolly, "I will see what his father thinks about it."

"Ye'll no be sae ill natured, Mrs Swertha,' said the jagger; "that will be but cauld thanks for the bonny owerlay that I hae brought you a' the way frae Lerwick."

"And a bonny price ye'll be setting on't," said Swertha; " for that's the gate your good deeds end."

“Ye sall hae the fixing of the price yoursell; or it may lie ower till you're buying something for the house, or for your master, and it can make a' ae count."

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Troth and that's true, Bryce Snails foot, I am thinking we'll want some napery sune-for it's no to be thought we can spin, and the like, as if there was a mistress in the house; and sae we make nane at hame.”

"And that's what I ca' walking by the word," said the jagger. "Go unto those that buy and sell;' there's muckle profit in that text."

"There is a pleasure in dealing wi' a discreet man, that can make profit of ony thing," said Swertha; and now that I take another look at that daft callant's waistcoat piece, I think it is honestly worth four dollars."

CHAPTER X.

"I have possessed the regulation of the weather and the distribution of the seasons. The sun has listened to my dictates, and passed from tropic to tropic by my direction; the clouds, at my command, have poured forth their waters."—

Rasselas.

ANY sudden cause for anxious and mortifying reflection, which, in advanced age, occasions sullen and pensive inactivity, stimulates youth to eager and active exertion, as if, like the hurt deer, they endeavour to drown the pain of the shaft by the rapidity of motion. When Mordaunt caught up his gun, and rushed out of the house of Jarlshof, he walked on with great activity over waste and wild, without any determined purpose, except that of escaping, if possible, from the smart of his own irritation. His pride was effectually mortified by the report of the jagger, which coincided exactly with some doubts he had been led to entertain, by

the long and unkind silence of his friends at

Burgh-Westra.

If the fortunes of Cæsar had doomed him, as the poet suggests, to have been

"But the best wrestler on the green,"

it is nevertheless to be presumed, that a foil from a rival, in that rustic exercise, would have mortified him as much as a defeat from his rival, when he was struggling for the empery of the world. And even so Mordaunt Mertoun, degraded in his own eyes from the height which he had occupied as the chief amongst the youth of the island, felt vexed and irritated, as well as humbled. The two beautiful sisters also, whose smiles all were so desirous of acquiring, with whom he had lived on terms of such familiar affection, that, with the same ease and innocence, there was unconsciously mixed a shade of deeper though undefined tenderness than characterizes fraternal love, they also seemed to have forgotten him. He could not be ignorant that, in the universal opinion of all Dunrossness, nay, of the whole Main-land, he might have had every chance

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