fulminated against any one who shall listen to, or harbour, poor Ned, he is a universal favourite, and often let in at a back door when his hosts would not venture to receive him at the front of their miserable hovels. He reads the scriptures incessantly, expounding and applying them to the individual necessities of his needy neighbours. He attends the fairs, and prevents many a quarrel. His talents as an arbitrator are in such request that he keeps several paltry cases of contention from the petty sessions, and is even consulted as an almanack, for the signs of bad or good weather." With this outline of Ned's character and history we approached his extra-ordinary _tabernacle_, which had no appearance whatsoever of human dwelling, till we reached it close enough to see a little wreath of blue smoke curling up from an orifice in the rock, and were assailed by the sharp and angry bark of a terrier, who lay sunning himself, with a cat lying close by him on a tuft of dried heath. A few great stones piled one upon the other, at each side of a natural aperture in the craggy face of the mountain, seemed to indicate the hand of man in bringing them together, and likewise to afford shelter to the entrance. A stout wooden door opening inwards appeared the only means of ingress to admit even the light of heaven, for windows I saw none. A few goats were roused from their _meditations_ by our arrival, and I had just pronounced the name of Robinson Crusoe to my companions, when, at the end of our scramble, which had occupied three hours in its performance, Ned himself started from his _lair_, and stood before us clad in a strong comfortable loose coat of a greyish frize, manufactured in this country by the poor people. He had shoes and stockings of coarse but warm materials; and moreover, a hat, which, though it had seen better days, defended his head from the rude blast of this desolate wilderness, and was fastened to a button-hole by an old red worsted garter. Such was his joy at sight of Frederick, that some minutes elapsed before he seemed sensible that his friend had any companions. "Oh, sir," said he, "the news came to me just as I was lying down last night; Tom Collins sent off little Maurice his son to Tim Scannel, who put his brother across the bay in the fishing-boat; and he ran every step o'the way over the hills till he brought me _the account_."