"Nonsense, I grant you," said one of the students; "but true enough for a' that, Bob. Ye see, John, Bob an' I were at the King's Muirs last Saturday, an ca'ed at the _pendicle_, in the passing, for a cup o' whey; when the guidwife tellt us there was ane o' the callants, who had broken into the milk-house twa nichts afore, lyin' ill o' a surfeit. 'Dangerous case,' said Bob; 'but let me see him; I have studied to small purpose if I know nothing o' medicine, my good woman.' Weel, the woman was just glad enough to bring him to the bedside; an' no wonder--ye never saw a wiser phiz in your lives--Dr. Dumpie's was naething till't; an', after he had sucked the head o' his stick for ten minutes, an' fand the loon's pulse, an' asked mair questions than the guidwife liked to answer, he prescribed. But, losh! sic a prescription! A day's fasting an' twa ladles o' nettle kail was the gist o't; but then there went mair Latin to the tail o' that, than oor neebor the Doctor ever had to lose." But I dwell too long on the conversation of this evening. I feel, however, a deep interest in recalling it to memory. The education of Ferguson was of a twofold character--he studied in the schools and among the people; but it was in the latter tract alone that he acquired the materials of all his better poetry; and I feel as if, for at least one brief evening, I was admitted to the privileges of a class-fellow, and sat with him on the same form. The company broke up a little after ten; and I did not again hear of John Hogg till I read his elegy, about four years after, among the poems of my friend. It is by no means one of the happiest pieces in the volume, nor, it strikes me, highly characteristic; but I have often perused it with an interest very independent of its merits. CHAPTER III. "But he is weak--both man and boy Has been an idler in the land."--WORDSWORTH. I was attempting to listen, on the evening of the following Sunday, to a dull, listless discourse--one of the discourses so common at this period, in which there was fine writing without genius, and fine religion without Christianity--when a person who had just taken his place beside me, tapped me on the shoulder, and thrust a letter into my hand. It was my newly-acquired friend of the previous evening; and we shook hands heartily under the pew. "That letter has just been handed me by an acquaintance from your part of the country," he whispered; "I trust it contains nothing unpleasant." I raised it to the light, and on ascertaining that it was sealed and edged with black, rose and quitted the church, followed by my friend. It intimated, in two brief lines that my patron, the baronet, had been killed by a fall from his horse a few evenings before; and that, dying intestate the allowance which had hitherto enabled me to prosecute my studies necessarily dropped. I crumpled up the paper in my hand.