_Edmund Layton_, thick in the arm and at times, be it confessed, thick in the head, was so thoroughly in love with _The Bright Eyes of Danger_ (CHAMBERS), and the brighter eyes of _Charlotte Macdonell_, Jacobitess, that in the rousing days of the YOUNG PRETENDER he not only lightly risked his life when his lady was in need, but more than once went out of his way to make things quite unnecessarily hazardous for himself, when I or any other of his more canny Hanoverian friends was longing to give him warning. For instance, when that taking villain, _Philip Macdonell_, after beating him in the race for the French treasure buried in the sands of Spey beside the sunken ship (_vide_ the frontispiece mystery chart), soon after fell comfortably into his hands, he had no more discretion than to take him out to fight a duel; whereon, as we others foresaw, the wily villain incontinently disappeared and the fun was all to begin again. Maybe we might forgive him that, for of such staple are good yarns spun, but why in heaven's name should bold _Edmund Layton_ of Liddesdale go about to make himself and us miserable with feckless scruples that ruined the happy ending we had fairly earned? Either he was right to let CHARLES STUART escape that day in the mist, in return for former generosity, or he was wrong; and one would have expected him to make up his mind and there an end, and not fret himself into a pother and Mr. JOHN FOSTER'S story into a most inartistic anti-climax over such a subtlety. All the same a rattling good tale, full of hard knocks as well as bright eyes, and with more than a smack of STEVENSON. * * * * *