yond the scope of the spring that was thought to be in my bow, or in the strength of my arm. Though less than the commonalty of mankind, (my stature, at this day, scarcely exceeds four feet and a half, and at no period. have I weighed more than ninety-eight pounds three ounces and a half) Providence yet so turned my consciousness of inferiority, that instead of repining at being abridged in my natural rights, I, when sent to school, burned with emulation to surpass my schoolfellows, and to show the bigger boys that the sleights of skill are more powerful than the strokes of vigour. This feeling has lived with me through life, causing my heart to overflow with thankfulness, that Heaven has been pleased to work out of the defects with which in its mysteries, I may say, it gifted me, an indemnification, in the enjoyment of earnest endeavour, far more satisfactory than the flatteries and temptations which fawn on the skirts of bodily beauty. But the courteous reader and I are as yet too slightly acquainted for him to enter with a right sympathy into the sentiments with which, in my

nightly thanksgivings, I bow the head of gratitude, because I am what I am. The recovery

of my health is, however, a passage in my history that should not be a passover. It was accounted an almost miraculous dispensation, and was in effect as wonderful on the mind itself as on its rickety tabernacle.

CHAPTER II.

She knew the herb,

Where it grew best, and when it should be gather'd.

IT would be wearisome to descant at any greater length on my weakliness and deformity, or of how the neighbours lamented that such a spunk o' geni, as they spoke of me in their cracks, should remain an object for life. Some proposed one kind of infallible, and some another; and the minister's wife was every summer vehement in her prescriptions of the salt-water at Fisherraw. But season after season came and passed;—the bud biggent and the blossom bloomed; the summer-nymph with her gowan walked in the sunshine of the moun

een,

away

tains ;-blithesome harvest laid down her apronful of sheaves at the barn-door, and the gaber

loony winter arose from the chumly-lug, and hirpled o'er the hill, but still no change came

to me.

At last, one morning, a gang of tinklers, with smiddy bellows, and other implements for making horn-spoons, came to the town; and there was among them a decent, gausy, conversible carlin, that could turn coats and shape gumashins, for which faculty she was feed to do a day's darg in my father's house. In this, which came out of a necessity on his part, there was a visible manifestation of Providence towards me. For Lucky A'things, as she was called, happened to cast a pityful eye on me, as I was sitting by the fire-side, making a whistle of a willow-wand, and she began to discourse with my father concerning my complaints.

Well may I remember what she said, for she spoke with great rationality, and in a manner that was more like a graduate than a granny. I had not, indeed, until that time, heard or seen any sort of womankind possessed of such insight. It is true, that among the old women of the clachen, there were not

wanting two or three who had gleaned in their time a few ears of experience.

Mrs. Musket, the widow of a serjeant who was slain at her side in the battle of Minden, was one of those, and it was allowed that her skill in bruises, visible hurts, and the cutted fingers of the shearers, would have made the fortune of an Edinbro' doctor. But she could not discern the sources of natural disease, and I had no benefit at her hands; moreover, my father,

ぺ

who was a pious and sincere man, did not like to see her about the house and among his young family, for she cursed like a drum-major, and when in her cups, which was too often, her nieve was said to be worse than a battering-ram.

This Mrs. Musket was of the West country, and her maiden name had been Barbara Buchanan. Some time, shortly after my recovery, she began now and then, when her means were low, to hint to the lasses that she had a gift, and could read tea-cups and cut the matrimonial cards, whereby she wiled from the simpletons many a siller penny and black bawbee. But notwithstanding her necromancy, old