But in time work of even the 'Old Mortality' order grew scarce. Accordingly, in the summer of June 1828, he visited Inverness, and inserted in the local papers an advertisement for employment. He felt that he could execute such commissions with greater care and exactness than were usual, and in a style that could be depended upon for correct spelling. He mentions himself the case of the English mason who mangled Proverbs xxxi. 10 into the bewildering abbreviation that 'A virtuous woman is 5s. to her husband,' and he might also have mentioned the case of the statue to George II. in Stephen's Green, Dublin, erected doubtless under municipal supervision, and which yet in the course of a brief Latin inscription of thirteen lines can show more than one mistake to the individual line. He had the curious, yet perhaps after all not unpractical, idea that his scheme for employment might be materially improved by his sending a copy of verses to the paper, in the belief that the public would infer that the writer of correct verse could be a reliable workman. But nothing came of this. In justice to the editor it may be allowed that the versification, if easy, was nothing remarkable, and felicity of epithets may be no guarantee for perfection of epitaphs. The reflection, however, came to him that there was no advantage to be won in thus, as he says, scheming himself into employment. It was not congenial, and walking 'half an inch taller' along the streets on the strength of this resolution, he was actually offered the Queen's shilling, or the King's to be chronologically correct, by a smart recruiting sergeant of a Highland regiment who from the powerful physique of the man had naturally inferred the possession of a choice recruit. He determined, accordingly, to face the worst and publish. He made a hasty selection of his verses through the last six years and approached the office of the _Inverness Courier_. This was a highly fortunate opening, for that paper was, then and up to 1878, edited by Robert Carruthers of Dumfries, who had been appointed editor of the _Courier_ in the very same year of Miller's visit. His _Life of Pope_ published in 1853 is still a standard production, and altogether Carruthers was one of the ablest editors in Scotland, and his paper which was edited on Liberal lines was a very powerful organ in his day. The friendship then begun lasted till the death of Miller unbroken, and was mutually advantageous. While he was still in the Highland capital he received word of the fatal illness of his uncle James, and his first work on his return was a neat tombstone for this close friend of his father and worthy to whom he was so deeply indebted for much of his own subsequent distinction.