Strange, sometimes, are the destinies of men, and mysterious the ways of Providence. In these expressions there is nothing new, for they have been repeated a thousand times before; but we are not sure that they have often been more strikingly illustrated than in the following short narrative--alas! "owre true a tale." Within a short distance of the town of Inverary, in Argyleshire, there lived, towards the middle of last century, a person of the name of M'Lauchlane. He was a miller to business; but, if any idea be formed of his circumstances as such, or of the general condition and appearance of his establishment, from those of the "jolly millers" of the low country, with their large, well-built, slated mills, filled with expensive machinery--their comfortable houses, and rough and round abundance--it will be a very erroneous one. The highland miller--he, at any rate, of the last century--was a very different person, and very differently circumstanced. His business was trifling, as it must, of necessity, have been, in a country yielding but little corn--just sufficient, and barely so, to support, with other aids, its thin and widely scattered population. His mill was a small, thatched, crazy building; and its machinery (almost all of wood), the clumsy, rude workmanship of the miller himself. Such, at any rate, was M'Lauchlane's establishment--a very poor affair; and very poor, though very industrious, and an honest and upright man, was M'Lauchlane himself. Yet, strange as it may seem in a person in his situation in life, he was not only an upright man, but a man of some education, of a grave and intelligent cast of countenance, and of a tall and athletic form. For fifteen years, M'Lauchlane toiled on his little farm with unwearied assiduity, struggling with a barren soil, that scarcely yielded a subsistence for his family, leaving no surplus for sale, the rent being paid by a few black cattle reared for the purpose; and more than half of that time dividing this labour with attendance on his little mill; and other fifteen years, had he lived so long, would, in all probability, have found him still thus employed, had not a circumstance occurred which suddenly changed his destiny. He quarrelled with his landlord, and resolved suddenly, in a fit of exasperation, upon leaving his mill. He never gave any further particulars of the occurrence which had galled his proud spirit. He never said what was the cause of quarrel between him and his laird; but the fancied disgrace of some harsh word which the latter had used towards him, preyed on his mind, and, in less than a fortnight after, he resigned his mill and his farm, and proceeded to the low country in search of employment. This he found in Edinburgh, where he had some friends, in the humble capacity of a caddie, or chairman.