"You have learned something very unpleasant," said Ferguson. "Pardon me--I have no wish to intrude; but, if at all agreeable, I would fain spend the evening with you." My heart filled, and grasping his hand, I briefly intimated the purport of the communication, and we walked out together in the direction of the ruins. "It is, perhaps, as hard, Mr. Ferguson," I said, "to fall from one's hopes as from the place to which they pointed. I was ambitious--too ambitious, it may be--to rise from that level on which man acts the part of a machine, and tasks merely his body, to that higher level on which he performs the proper part of a rational creature, and employs only his mind. But that ambition need influence me no longer. My poor mother, too--I had trusted to be of use to her." "Ah, my friend," said Ferguson, "I can tell you of a case quite as hopeless as your own--perhaps more so. But it will make you deem my sympathy the result of mere selfishness. In scarce any respect do our circumstances differ." We had reached the ruins: the evening was calm and mild as when I had walked out on the preceding one; but the hour was earlier, and the sun hung higher over the hill. A newly-formed grave occupied the level spot in front of the little ivied corner. "Let us seat ourselves here," said my companion, "and I will tell you a story--I am afraid a rather tame one; for there is nothing of adventure in it, and nothing of incident; but it may at least show you that I am not unfitted to be your friend. It is now nearly two years since I lost my father. He was no common man--common neither in intellect nor in sentiment; but though he once fondly hoped it should be otherwise--for in early youth he indulged in all the dreams of the poet--he now fills a grave as nameless as the one before us. He was a native of Aberdeenshire; but held, latterly, an inferior situation in the office of the British Linen Company in Edinburgh, where I was born. Ever since I remember him, he had awakened too fully to the realities of life, and they pressed too hard on his spirits, to leave him space for the indulgence of his earlier fancies; but he could dream for his children, though not for himself; or, as I should perhaps rather say, his children fell heir to all his more juvenile hopes of fortune, and influence, and space in the world's eye;--and, for himself, he indulged in hopes of a later growth and firmer texture, which pointed from the present scene of things to the future. I have an only brother, my senior by several years, a lad of much energy, both physical and mental; in brief, one of those mixtures of reflection and activity which seem best formed for rising in the world. My father deemed him most fitted for commerce, and had influence enough to get him introduced into the counting-house of a respectable Edinburgh merchant. I was always of a graver turn--in part, perhaps, the effect of less robust health--and me he intended for the Church. I have been a dreamer, Mr.