"Oh, that'll be frae his brither Henry, I'll wad; a clever cheild too, but ower fond o' the drap drink, maybe, like Rob himsel'. Baith o' them fine humane chields, though, without a grain o' pride. Rob takes a stan' wi' me sometimes o' half an hour at a time, an' we clatter ower the buiks; an', if I'm no mista'en, yon's him just yonder--the thin, pale slip o' a lad wi' the broad brow. Ay, an' he's just comin' this way." "Anything new to-day, Thomas?" said the young man, coming up to the stall. "I want a cheap second-hand copy of Ramsay's 'Evergreen;' and, like a good man as you are, you must just try and find it for me." Though considerably altered--for he was taller and thinner than when at college, and his complexion had assumed a deep sallow hue--I recognised him at once, and presented him with the letter. "Ah! from brother Henry," said he, breaking it open, and glancing his eye over the contents. "What--_old college chum, Mr. Lindsay_!" he exclaimed, turning to me. "Yes, sure enough; how happy I am we should have met! Come this way--let us get out of the streets." We passed hurriedly through the Canongate and along the front of Holyrood-house, and were soon in the King's Park, which seemed this morning as if left to ourselves. "Dear me, and this is you yourself!--and we have again met, Mr. Lindsay!" said Ferguson; "I thought we were never to meet more. Nothing, for a long time, has made me half so glad. And so you have been a sailor for the last four years. Do let us sit down here in the warm sunshine, beside St. Anthony's Well, and tell me all your story, and how you happened to meet with brother Henry." We sat down, and I briefly related, at his bidding, all that had befallen me since we had parted at St. Andrew's, and how I was still a common sailor, but, in the main, perhaps, not less happy than many who commanded a fleet. "Ah, you have been a fortunate fellow," he said; "you have seen much and enjoyed much; and I have been rusting in unhappiness at home. Would that I had gone to sea along with you!" "Nay, now, that won't do," I replied. "But you are merely taking Bacon's method of blunting the edge of envy. You have scarcely yet attained the years of mature manhood, and yet your name has gone abroad over the whole length and breadth of the land, and over many other lands besides. I have cried over your poems three thousand miles away, and felt all the prouder of my country for the sake of my friend. And yet you would fain persuade me that you wish the charm reversed, and that you were just such an obscure salt-water man as myself!" "You remember," said my companion, "the story of the half-man, half-marble prince of the Arabian tale. One part was a living creature, one part a stone; but the parts were incorporated, and the mixture was misery. I am just such a poor unhappy creature as the enchanted prince of the story."