provostship of the unfortunate Alexander Wilson; and were not only man and wife by holy Kirk, but a copartnership, insomuch as, Dauvit being a tailor, she after marriage, and having no children to “fash her,” became a tailor also, sitting on the same board with him, using the same goose, yea, pricking the same flea with emulous needle. Yet our couple were in some respects the most unlike each other in the world; Robina being a sharp, clear-witted, nay, ingenious woman--Dauvit a mere big boy. I do not know if I could give the reader a better explanation of the expression I have used than by referring him to the notion he might form of Holbein’s picture of his son, whom he quaintly and humorously painted as a man, but retaining all the features, except size, of a boy: the chubby cheeks, small snub nose, pinking eyes, and delicate colours. Nor was Dauvit a big chubby man merely as respected the body, for he was also little better than chubby in mind; at least in so far as regards credulity, passiveness, and softness. He had a marvellous appetite for worldly wonders, the belief being in the direct ratio of the wonderfulness, and he gave credit to the last thing he heard, for no other reason than that it was the last thing; one impression thus effacing another, so that the soft round lump remained always much the same. All which peculiarities were, it may easily be supposed, not only known to, but very well appreciated by, his loving, but perhaps not over-faithful, Binny. If you keep these things in your mind, you will be able the better to estimate the value of the facts as I proceed to tell you that one morning Dauvit was a little later in getting out of bed than was usual with him, by reason that he had on the previous night been occupied with a suit of those sacredly-imperative things called in Scotland “blacks,” that is, mourning. But then the time was not lost; for Robina was up and active, very busily engaged in preparing breakfast. Not that Dauvit condescended to take much notice of these domestic duties of Binny, because he had ample faith not only in her housewifery, but the wonderful extent of her understanding; only it just happened, as indeed anything _may_ happen in a world where we do not know why anything _does_ happen, that as he lay very comfortably under the welcome pressure of the soft blankets, with his eyes looking as it were out of a hole, he heard a tap at the door, which tap was just as like that of the letter-carrier as any two blunts of exactly the same length could possibly be. Nor did his observation stop here; for he saw with these same eyes, as if confirming his ears, Binny go to the door and open it; then came the words of doubtless the said letter-carrier, “That’s for Dauvit;” and at the same instant a letter was put into his wife’s hands, and thereafter disappeared at the hole of her pocket, where there were many things that David knew nothing about.