Dunduff and Carrick's brown hill had mist yet resting on their summits, and afar off, paling away to greyish blue, was Ailsa Craig, rising like a cloud from the water--the white canvas of many a ship, homeward-bound or outward-bound, merchantman, privateer and letter-of-marque, like sea birds floating on the bosom of the widening river. On the other side he saw the rich undulations that look down on the vast and fertile plains of Kyle and Cunninghame, and in the middle distance Maybole, amid the golden morning haze, the quaint little capital of Carrick, with its baronial tower and Tolbooth spire. There he considered himself as certain of being recognised by some of the vintners, ostlers, or by Pate, the town piper, for the place had been a favourite turning point with him and Flora Warrender in their evening rides; and he also knew that if he were _not_ recognised, the smallness of his portmanteau suggested that the estimate which might be formed of him by Boniface, by waiters and others, would not be very high. He therefore resolved to avoid that ancient Burgh-of-Barony altogether, and the carrier for Ayr coming up at that moment, he struck a bargain with him for conveyance thither. Remembering how Roderick Random and other great men had travelled by this humble mode of locomotion, he gladly took his seat by the side of the driver, a lively and cheerful fellow, who knew all the cottars and girls on the road, and who whistled or sang incessantly varying marches, rants, and reels, with Burns' songs, every one of which he knew by heart--and he knew Burns too, having, as he boasted, "flitted the poet from Irvine to Mossgiel in '84--just four-and-twenty years sinsyne." He blithely shared his humble breakfast of sour milk in a luggie, barley meal bannock and Dunlop cheese, with our hero, whose spirits seemed to rise as the morning sun soared into the cloudless sky, and he seemed to feel now the necessity of ceasing to mope, of becoming the maker of his own fate, the arbiter of his own destiny, and he determined, if possible, to "wrestle with the dark angel of adversity till she brightened and blessed him." When left to himself, however, lulled by the monotonous rumble of the waggon wheels, he lay back among the carrier's bales, and gave himself up to day-dreams and his old trade of airy castle-building. He had forty guineas in his pocket, he was sound wind and limb, and had all the world before him!