who have had no training in gymnastics. The great success of the Shetland fisheries during the last year or two has brought to Lerwick a palpable increase of business and droves of business men. In the Grand Hotel there were, in August last, thirty gentlemen resident who were in some way brought thither by the traffic in herring--among the number a young Russian, who, with his wife, sat at a little table apart, and kept jabbering their language with glib expressiveness. His name was Walk-off, and his object was the annexation of fish for Muscovite consumption. He had a flabby face and long, dark hair, which he publicly combed. _She_ was small and pretty--doll-like, indeed--with jewels in her ears, which glittered and flashed in the gas-light. She was a very loquacious wee creature, and her intonation reminded me of the caressing way the Swedes articulate English. I heard him read the Russian newspapers to her with evident emotion, but the only word I could make out was _Kouropatkin_. The herring-agents at the hotel table were full of drollery. One of them, hailing from Wick, addressed a neighbour abruptly to this effect: "I am a rather expensive man to sit beside, and to one like you especially so, for you seem to be a water-drinker. When I tell you who I am, however, you will insist on standing me a bottle of champagne." He was frigidly asked to state his grounds for such a preposterous expectation. "Prepare to gasp," he replied; "you see before you one who is a model and a beacon to all the men of Caithness. I am the sire of nine sturdy sons, and _they have only three birth-days among them_, seeing that they came into this vale of tears three at a time." CHAPTER VI. COMMERCIAL TRAVELLERS AND THEIR ANECDOTES. Trials of commercials--The two-est-faced knave--Mary, the maid of the inn--Anecdotes of the smoking-room: Sonnet to Raleigh--Peelin's below the tree--"She's away!"--A mean house--One of the director's wives--Temperance hotels--A memorial window--The blasted heath--The day for it--The converted drummer--A circular ticket--A compound possessive--Sixteen medals--"She's auld, and she's thin, and she'll keep"--The will o' the dead--Sorry for London--"Raither unceevil"--An unwelcome recitation--A word in season--A Nairn critic--A grand day for it--A pro-Boer--"Falls of Bruar, only, please!"--A bad case of nerves. TRIALS OF COMMERCIALS.