There are doubtless many odd and curious ways of earning even an honest livelihood in this world, but the oddest, and to us, while uninitiated, the most puzzling we have met with for a long time, was the following:--On a fine day lately, we took our boat to the mouth of the Coe, and were leisurely proceeding up the far-famed glen, when we saw, a little before us, a diminutive but still active old man, whom, from his peculiar style of dress, we had no difficulty in recognising as a peripatetic vendor of ballads, letter-paper, steel pens, and other knick-knacks, who frequently pays us a visit in Lochaber, and with whom, in lieu of better company, we have had many a far from uninteresting roadside crack. As, with a longer and livelier stride than his, we were rapidly overtaking him, we noticed that he frequently stopped and picked up something, now from the middle of the road, now from the footpath at the side, and occasionally from the grass beyond, which something he instantly deposited in a sort of canvas side-pouch, or wallet slung at his side. "Well, Willie," we exclaimed, as we came up with him, "what in the world are you doing in the glen to-day, and where's your pack? I wish to have a look at your bundle of ballads?" "Weel, sir," was Willie's response, "my pack is laid by at Duror just now; my present wark"--here he made a dart at something on the grass that looked to us uncommonly like a big black beetle, and transferred it to his wallet,--"my present wark," he went on to say, "pays far better, and is mair pleasant, besides, in this dreadfu' hot weather." "But what is your present work, Willie?" we inquired, "what are you so industriously picking up along the road and transferring to your wallet? Snails? beetles? what?" "No mony snails, or beetles either, sir," said Willie, with more entomological good sense than we gave him credit for, "abroad in such hot and dry weather as this is. I'm no very fond of telling what I am doing to everybody; and when I see anybody coming, I generally sit down and let them pass; but I saw you coming, sir, and I kent ye brawly, and didn't mind. And now I'll show ye what I'm gathering." With this he put his hand in his capacious pouch, and took out a handful of cigar and cheroot stumps, of all shapes and sizes. Some had been "smoked out," that is, till only an inch or so remained; others were only half smoked, and a few had only afforded the smoker a whiff or two, when, from a disinclination to smoke any further, or, perhaps, from some defect in the cigar itself, it was thrown away as of no further use. Of these cigar stumps "Willie" had at that moment nearly a pound weight in his wallet, the result of his forenoon's labours. We daresay we looked, as we really were, very much puzzled, which, Willie observing, he politely asked us for a light for his pipe, and invited us to sit on a ledge of rock by the roadside, and he would "tell us a' aboot it." Our pipes alight,