Most certainly, at least, this iron cage was not intended to immure the delicate person of the beautiful Ailsie Plenderleith, the only daughter of the advocate--nay, the greatest belle you could have met, displaying her gown of mazerine and her petticoat of cramosie, from “the castle on the knowe to the palace in the howe;” or, as the saying went, from “the castle gate to the palace yett.” We don’t doubt that our Miss Ailsie deserved all this high-flown praise; only we are to keep in mind that no young lady that ever figured in a legend, from the time of the Fair Maid of Troy to her of Perth, was ever anything less than an angel without wings. And in the case of our Ailsie, she might well have passed for possessing these appendages too, when we consider that she would not be behind her sister-belles in the size of those heavy folds of braided silk they drew through their pocket-holes, and seemed to fly with. We need not say that such a creature, if amiable in her mind and affections, would be doated on by such a father as Mr Plenderleith, who had now no wife to console him, and who would expect from his child at least as much love as he was willing to bestow on her. And so, to be sure, it was; he loved his dear Ailsie to what may be called paternal distraction, but as for how much dutiful affection Ailsie bestowed on him, we cannot say. On another point we can be more sure, and that is, that although her father had many nice beaux in his eye who had a power to _dot_, and doubtless on so fine a subject no disinclination at all to _doat_, the never a one of them would the saucy Ailsie look upon except with that haughty disdain which, when it appears in a beautiful woman, is so apt to pique young admirers into greater adoration, mixed, it may be, sometimes with a little choler--a thing that is not so alien to love as you would imagine. Nor was the reason of all this cold _hauteur_ any wonder at all when we are given to know that Miss Plenderleith had one day, by the merest chance, taken into her eye, and even to the back or innermost recesses thereof, the figure of a young student of “old Embro’ College,” called Frederick Lind, a poor bursar of no family, but blessed with what was ten thousand times of more importance in the estimation of the tasteful Ailsie--a handsome person, and a fine ruddy, intelligent face, which was lighted up with an eye as likely to drink up the form of Ailsie as hers had been to receive his. And no doubt it may appear very wonderful that Cupid, who is, as they say, as blind as a bat, and so hits by chance, should have the power of imparting to the eyes of his victims the faculty not only of seeing each other more clearly than before, but also of reading each other’s eyes so plainly, that by a glance they know that they are mutually thinking of each other. But such, we all know very well, is the fact, and so Frederick Lind and Ailsie Plenderleith came to this state of