said, “here is double the amount to you, to take you on your journey, and I am sufficiently repaid by your ridding my house of disagreeable guests.” He took the gift thankfully, and turned his face northwards, to come to Scotland (_Albainn_). The next evening, he saw a fine house, to which he went in the dusk, and asked permission to warm himself. He was allowed to enter, and while standing with his back to the fire, the daughter of the house saw the handsome stranger, and she told her father. He desired food to be given to him, and that he was to be sent where he was. When she went with this request, the soldier asked who her father was. She said he was a nobleman (_àrd-dhuin’ uasal_). “A soldier is a bad companion for a nobleman,” he said. He went with her and saw her father, a grey-haired man in a chair, looking about him. The soldier was asked to sit down. After conversing some time, the old man said, “Young man, I have a daughter here who gives me much trouble to keep her in company. If you can play cards (_iomairt chairtean_), take my place at the table; there is a money reward (_duais airgid_) for every game won.” “I have no money,” the soldier replied. “I will lend you some,” she said. The play went on till he won six games, one after another. He then wanted to stop playing, and offered her back all the winnings, but she would only take the sum she lent him, saying the rest was rightly his own. He was to remain there that night, and was not to go away in the morning without telling them. Being afraid of pursuit, he went away at daybreak. He had not gone far when he knew that a horseman was coming after him. He waited to see if he was sent to get back the money he had won at the card table; but it was a messenger with a request to him from the nobleman to return to the castle. When he appeared the nobleman chid him for leaving the castle unknown to him, and told him how his daughter had fallen in love with him, and had resolved never to marry any one else. The soldier said, “A soldier is a poor husband for her.” The nobleman was convinced that he was not a common soldier whatever circumstances had placed him in that position, and said he preferred his daughter’s happiness to wealth or rank. He remained with them and married the daughter; and when he laid aside the soldier’s dress, there was not his equal to be seen in the new dress provided for him. He was esteemed for the dignity of his demeanour as much as he was admired for his fine appearance, and he lived, without remembrance of his past misadventures, in the enjoyment of happiness and prosperity. In those days news travelled slowly, newspapers appearing only once or twice a year in populous villages, and they did not reach remote places. In one which came to the nobleman at this time, there was an account of two men tied in an iron rod (_ann an slait iaruinn_) who were being exhibited at a market town in England. He went with the nobleman and his friends to