did he do that; for, for the three weeks that Willie stayed at hame wi’ us, not a bit o’ Rob was to be seen at either kirk or market.--Puir Willie! he has got fighting enough sinsyne.” Sandy Wright shared with the boy his supper and his bed; and, on setting out on the following morning, he brought him along with him, despite the remonstrances of the other boatmen, who dreaded his proving an incumbrance. The story of the little fellow, though simple, was very affecting. His mother, a poor widow, had lived for the five preceding years in the vicinity of Inverness, supporting herself and her boy by her skill as a seamstress. As early as his sixth year he had shown a predilection for reading; and, with the anxious solicitude of a Scottish mother, she had wrought late and early to keep him at school. But her efforts were above her strength, and, after a sore struggle of nearly four years, she at length sank under them. “Oh!” said the boy to his companion, “often would she stop in the middle of her work, and lay her hand on her breast, and then she would ask me what would I do when she would be dead--and we would both greet. Her fingers grew white and sma’, and she couldna sit up at nights as before; but her cheeks were redder and bonnier than ever, and I thought that she surely wouldna die;--she has told me that she wasna eighteen years older than mysel’. Often, often when I waukened in the morning, she would be greetin’ at my bedside; and I mind one day, when I brought home the first prize from school, that she drew me till her, an’ told me wi’ the tear in her ee, that the day would come, when her head would be low, that my father’s gran’ friends, who were ashamed o’ her because she was poor, would be proud that I was connected wi’ them. She soon couldna hold up her head at all, and if it wasna for a neighbour woman, who hadna muckle to spare, we would have starved. I couldna go to the school, for I needed to stay and watch by her bedside, and do things in the house; and it vexed her more that she was keeping me from my learning, than that hersel’ was sae ill. But I used to read chapters to her out of the Bible. One day when she was very sick, two neighbour women came in, and she called me to her and told me, that when she would be dead I would need to go to Edinburgh, for I had no friends anywhere else. Her own friends were there, she said, but they were poor, and couldna do muckle for me; and my father’s friends were there too, and they were gran’ and rich, though they wadna own her. She told me no to be feared by the way, for that Providence kent every bit o’t, and He would make folk to be kind to me; and then she kissed me, and grat, and bade me go to the school. When I came out she was lying wi’ a white cloth on her face, and the bed was all white. She was dead; and I could do nothing but greet a’ that night; and she was dead still. I’m now travelling to Edinburgh, as she bade me, and folk are kind to me just as she said;