These pleasing but somewhat effeminate dreams were dissipated by his love for Miss Fraser, as a pretty little garden on the flanks of Etna might be torn to pieces by the heavings of the volcano. He would marry her into the rank of a lady, or he would not marry her, in Scotland at least, at all. If it proved impossible for him to rise in his native country, the lovers would seek a nook in the backwoods, and place the Atlantic between them and the conventional notions and estimates of British society. But the necessity for this step did not occur. Miller was offered a situation in a branch office of the Commercial Bank, which was opened in Cromarty in 1835. He laid down the mallet, not without satisfaction but assuredly with no exultation, and, after a brief initiation in the mysteries of banking at Linlithgow, entered on his duties as bank accountant. Too healthful and honest of nature to trifle in the discharge of any duties which he undertook, he addressed himself with vigorous application to the business of the bank, and found his new situation an admirable post for the study of human nature. It was in conveying the bank's money between Cromarty and Tain that he first carried firearms, a practice which he seems to have almost constantly maintained from this time forward. It was at the time of his joining the bank that his first prose volume, 'Scenes and Legends of the North of Scotland,' was published. It contains passages of exquisite beauty, and has since attained to considerable popularity; but it was not immediately successful, and added little to the modest income of its author. His marriage took place in the beginning of 1837; he was then thirty-five years old, and had been engaged to Miss Fraser for five years.