He withdrew--I looked after him, and then took a short turn on deck, where every thing was going on much as usual; I then returned to the cabin, and having stretched myself along the locker, and seen the windsail comfortably drawing down the small skylight? I unrolled the manuscript, which was entitled "THE SORROWS OF SAUNDERS SKELP." Poor Dominie Skelp! his sorrows were amusing enough, here and there, melancholy as his story was in the main. Some parts of the narrative were powerful, although unequally written, as if the mind of the writer had originally been calm and clear as a polished mirror, until shattered by the rude blows of misfortune into dust and rubbish, but still intermingled here and there with bright and sparkling fragments. His father, a respectable tradesman in a small country town, had cramped himself in every way to give his son a good education, and he had actually attained the barren dignity of a licentiate in the Scottish Kirk. After this he became the schoolmaster of the parish, and was even in the habit of occasionally preaching for Mr Bland, the clergyman, or minister thereof, as he called him. At length he fell in love with a beautiful and innocent girl; after which it was all the old story,-- "The course of true love never did run smooth." And the loves of Saunders Skelp and Jessy Miller were no exception to the rule; the young laird, Mr Adderfang, having seduced the girl, and contrived, by a very mean and cruel _ruse_, not only to blast the happiness of both, but even to cast the blame of the transaction on the young probationer for a season. "But let the dominie tell his own story, Master Benjie." "With all my heart, my boy. So here it is; mind it don't try your patience, however." "EPISODE OF THE STICK LEG. "And Adam fell by Eve: from womankind All evil was derived; had the male race But grown like turnips, man had never sinned. _Dominie Skelp's Illustrations of Byron, MS._ "My great-grandfather, grandfather, and immediate progenitor, were all _ministers' men_ in the landward parish of Lincumdodie. "My father had added to his more immediate vocation, that of a shoemaker; and being a good tradesman, we were the easiest in our circumstances of any family in the village, until my stepmother suddenly took to drinking, and thereby nearly broke my father down in mind, body, and estate. "I can call it nothing else but a disease; for hitherto she had always been a discreet body, and a kind to me, considering I was an only bairn, and therefore sure to be fashious, and nane of her ain flesh and blood forby. "My father focht lang with her, strapping her respectably at ae time, and fleeching and praying with her at anither; syne he would get the minister himsell to speak till her, but a' wad not do, for the puir body just grat and listened, and gat fou again; and grat and listened and gat fou, until at length the auld man crossed his arms in downricht despair, _and let her at it_.