380 MAN OF SCIENCE. 



lain in some period of the Old Red on this bank. The 

 herrings never lay so thickly on our coasts in the fishing 

 season. Out of an area across which two average-sized 

 nets would extend, I have been digging fish for the last 

 twelve years. I have taken many hundreds away, and 

 broken up many thousands more, and they seem in- 

 numerable still. Did our recent fish crowd together as 

 closely, a single net would mesh enough to load a 

 boat/ 



* Thursday evening. 



' What would I not give for an occasional peep into 

 the magic mirror of the tale, that I might see what you 

 are doing, and how you are looking, and what Ha-ha and 

 Bill are about ! But I dare say I bear your absence 

 better without it. It would serve but to suspend the 

 viands over the hungry man. I am counting the days 

 till I receive your reply to my last. You would have 

 my letter on Wednesday ; yours will be posted to-day ; 

 it will be all this evening and all to-morrow on the 

 road, and I shall have it on Saturday. Or suppose a 

 day is lost through your distance from the Post-office, 

 it will not arrive in that case till Sunday ; but though 

 business letters may take their Sabbath-day's rest, and 

 welcome, my own Lydia's letter cannot be permitted to 

 lie silent so near me. I shall have young Andrew to 

 call for it, and if it tell me of your welfare, and that you 

 enjoy yourself, I shall go to church with a heart all the 

 more soft and grateful through its influence. A short 

 absence, dearest, serves to show me how very dear you 

 are to me ; you grow large as you recede, and you are 

 tall enough at present to fill my whole heart from top to 

 bottom. Good-bye ; it is past ten, and I intend rising 

 early to-morrow morning, if well, to make another at- 

 tempt on Shandwick.' 



