A lovely sunset was shedding glory on the scene, and all was peaceful but the mind of that lost man. In looking listlessly around, his eye fell on a comfortable and well-sheltered residence, the very air of which proclaimed it, to Johnston’s experienced eye, a minister’s manse. There was a large garden attached, well stocked with fruit trees and bushes, and every other appurtenance that could render a country house snug and attractive. I don’t know whether the thought struck him that he might have been the comfortable occupant of such a house—possibly it did, for he was conscious that he had more talent than dozens of the drones occupying manses of the kind—but his immediate action was to rouse himself to consider whether he could not lay the occupant under contribution. A passing field hand, belonging to the village close by, supplied him with the occupant’s name and opinions, and, thus armed, he ventured up to the house, gently rang the bell, and with some difficulty induced the servant to take up his name—“The Rev. Alfred Johnston”—to her master. Johnston stood demurely in the lobby, to which he had been admitted with marked suspicion by the servant, till the Rev. Robert Goodall appeared, in spectacles and slippers, direct from his study. If he had been startled to learn that a brother clergyman wished to see him, he was much more so at seeing the brother clergyman. But Johnston was fluent of tongue, and he had experience in dealing with such surprise. “I am really a clergyman, as I can prove to you, but have been reduced to this state by my own folly,” he hastened to humbly say. “And I have not come to beg or ask you for money, as I daresay there are so many legitimate calls upon your goodness that you can ill afford to succour strangers. But I have walked all the way from Glasgow, and am now nearly fainting with hunger. If you could tell your servant to give me, out on the door-step or at the road-side, enough broken victuals, no matter how plain or coarse, to support me till morning, your kindness will never be forgotten.” The clergyman heard him in silence, and probably scepticism; but on questioning him closely as to his college career, was surprised to find every statement agreeing with his own knowledge. Johnston described the classes; mimicked the Professors; quoted Greek and Hebrew writings with the utmost ease and correctness, and even showed that he had made the acquaintance of personal friends of Mr Goodall who had attended during the same sessions. In this narration Johnston had only to keep to the truth to make it saddening to listen to, and this he did, adding a few pathetic touches about a wife and child left in great want in Glasgow, while he made a struggle to reach Edinburgh on foot, in hope of securing a tutor’s place, for which he was well qualified. “Do you mean to try to reach Edinburgh to-night?” inquired the clergyman, with some pity in his tones.