he at once discharged at the breast of the guide, who rolled off his horse into the bushes below. Realising now the plot against him, and that there were accomplices above, he put spurs to his horse, and dashed down the road. So steep was the descent, and so shaded with trees and bushes, that he could only be seen at the bends, at each of which a shower of bullets whizzed past him. He succeeded in keeping ahead of his assailants, who continued to pursue and fire at him until they were almost within gunshot of the French sentries. As soon as he arrived at the town, he sought the commandant and told his story. The officer, on learning where he had got his horse, told him that he owed his life to the animal, not merely for its speed. It appeared that the insurgents knew the horse well, and desired to procure it for one of their leaders. When they heard that it had been sold, they had evidently planned to possess themselves of it, and had arranged the ambush to which the professor of law had nearly fallen a victim. But it was the horse they wanted, not its rider. Had mere robbery been their object, they could easily have shot the horse, and whether or not they put a bullet through him also, they would have stripped him of all his possessions. But they purposely fired high for fear of wounding or killing the animal, which they had expected to be able to present to their leader. [Sidenote: PROFESSOR PILLANS] Robert Chambers used wittily to classify mankind in two divisions--those who had been ‘under Pillans,’ and those who had not. I am glad to be able to range myself in the first class. Pillans was Professor of Latin (or Humanity as the subject used to be termed in Scotland) in the University of Edinburgh. Perhaps his name was most widely known from its having been unwarrantably pilloried by Byron in his _English Bards and Scotch Reviewers_. He was a born educationist, far in advance of his time in certain departments of teaching, more particularly in his recognition of the place that should be assigned to geography in the educational system of the country. When I sat in his class-room he had reached his seventy-seventh year, and was no longer as able as he had once been to control a large gathering of lads fresh from school. But even then no one who was willing to learn could fail to find much that was suggestive in his prelections. As he sat in his chair behind his desk, his small stature was not observable. One only saw the round bald head, the rubicund cheeks, the mild blue eyes, the hands wielding a huge reading glass (for he would never consent to wear spectacles) and the shoulders wrapped round in his velvet-collared black gown. He was a scholar of the antique type, more intent on the subject, spirit, and style of his Latin favourites, than on grammatical niceties or various readings. How he loved his Horace, and how he took to his heart any student in whom he could detect the rudiments of the