The Collector of His Majesty's Customs at the Port of Greenock was an immediate relation to the Laird of Drimnin by marriage, and a correspondence was entered on with him with the view of ascertaining his opinion as to what was best to be done for Alan. Negotiations occupied more time for their conduct at that time than in the present day; at any rate nothing satisfactory was proposed to Alan, so that for a couple of years he continued wandering up and down the island of Mull, and through the glens of Morvern, entirely under the guidance of his uncle. At last a request came from the Collector to send the fugitive to him, that he might find employment for him in his own office. The uncle decreed, rather against Alan's grain, that the offer of clerkship should meanwhile be accepted. He remained in this occupation for several months, until he received an invitation from another friend residing in Leith. This gentleman wrote to say that there was now an opportunity of giving him service in an enterprise likely to be congenial to "a man of metal" such as he conceived Alan to be. The war of American Independence had commenced, and the employment which the Leith friend proposed was that Alan should join a privateer which was fitting out in an English port, armed with letters of marque, to capture and destroy American shipping. Alan answered the invitation by repairing to Leith in person with all speed. The nature of the service offered, however, did not accord with his ideas of honourable warfare; in fact, he considered it more akin to piracy, and not such as a gentleman should take part in. He had no affection, he said, for clerkship, but he had still less for the life of a pirate. While Alan was oscillating in this manner, he learned that another relative of his mother's, Colonel Alan Maclean of Torloisk, who had emigrated to one of the North American colonies some years previously, had received a commission to embody a regiment of those of his countrymen who had become residents on free-grants of land at the same time with himself. To this gentleman Alan decided on going. Soldiering was more genial to his nature than marine freebooting, and he calculated on Colonel Maclean's assistance in that direction. (This Colonel Maclean's grand-daughter was Miss Clephane Maclean, afterwards Marchioness of Northampton.) Arrived in America, Alan was received kindly by his relative, and being a soldier himself he viewed the past event in Alan's life as of a nature not entirely without a certain amount of recommendation to a wanderer in search of fame. Alan was not long in the country when Colonel Maclean added him to his list of volunteers, in a body, which was soon afterwards enrolled as the "Royal Highland Emigrant Corps." (_To be Continued._) FOOTNOTES: [Footnote A: Sir John Sinclair.] [Footnote B: Brown or brindled wrangler.] A. R. wants to know "the best standard for Gaelic orthography?"