84 THE BANK ACCOUNTANT. 



cause it is good, and for the pure love of doing it. I 

 feel, however, very anxious on his account regarding the 

 mission. The part of the country to which he is going 

 is said to be wretchedly unwholesome full of lakes 

 and marshes, and infested with miasma ; and sometimes, 

 when I consider the exhaustive fervency of his spirit 

 and the weakness of his frame, I cannot avoid fearing 

 that I may have yet to think of him in connection with 

 a solitary Highland churchyard and a nameless grave. 

 Poor William Ross ! he is now seven years dead, and 

 were I to lose John also, where might I look for friends 

 of the same class, men who, attached to me for my 

 own sake alone, could regard me in every change of 

 circumstance with but one feeling? And John, too, is 

 more than my friend. He is, my own Lydia and I 

 love him ten times the more for it he is ours. 



6 1 pursued my journey from the school-house in the 

 morning, and in passing through the deep, dreary wood 

 of Culrossie, found myself, as I supposed, quite on the 

 eve of an adventure. I carried with me a considerable 

 sum of money several hundred pounds, and that I 

 might be the better able to protect it, had furnished 

 myself with a brace of pistols, when, lo ! in the thickest 

 and most solitary part of the wood up there started 

 two of the most blackguard-looking fellows I ever saw. 

 They seemed to be Irish horse-jockeys. One wore a 

 black patch over his eye, and a ragged straw hat ; the 

 other a white frieze jacket, sorely out at the elbows ; 

 and both were armed with bludgeons loaded with lead. 

 I had time enough ere they came up to cock both my 

 pistols. One I thrust under the breast flap of my coat, 

 the other I carried behind my back, and sheering to the 

 extreme edge of the road with a trigger under each 

 fore-finger, I passed them unmolested. One of them 



