and I have letters to show me the way to my mother’s friends when I reach the town; for I can read write.” Such was the narrative of the poor boy. Throughout the whole of the journey, Sandy Wright was as a father to him. He shared with him his meals and his bed, and usually for the last half dozen miles of every stage, he carried him on his back. On reaching the Queensferry, however, the boatman found that his money was well-nigh expended. I must just try and get him across, thought he, without paying the fare. The boat had reached the middle of the ferry, when one of the ferrymen, a large gruff-looking fellow, began to collect the freight. He passed along the passengers one after one, and made a dead stand at the boy. “Oh!” said Sandy Wright, who sat by him, “dinna stop at the boy;--it’s a puir orphan; see, here’s my groat.” The ferryman still held out his hand. “It’s a puir orphan,” reiterated the boatman; “we found him bewildered, on the bursting out o’ the last storm, in a dismal habitless glen o’ Badenoch, an’ we’ve ta’en him wi’ us a’ the way, for he’s going to seek his friends at Edinburgh; surely ye’ll no grudge him a passage?” The ferryman, without deigning him a reply, plucked off the boy’s bonnet; the boatman instantly twitched it out of his hand. “Hoot, hoot, hoot!” he exclaimed, “the puir fatherless and motherless boy!--ye’ll no do that?” “Take tent, my man,” he added, for the ferryman seemed doggedly resolved on exacting the hire; “take tent; we little ken what may come o’ oursel’s yet, forbye our bairns.” “By ----, boatman, or whatever ye be,” said the ferryman, “I’ll hae either the fare or the fare’s worth, though it should be his jacket;” and he again laid hold on the boy, who began to cry. Sandy Wright rose from his seat in a towering passion. “Look ye, my man,” said he, as he seized the fellow by the collar with a grasp that would have pulled a bull to the ground, “little hauds me from pitching ye out owre the gunwale. Only crook a finger on the poor thing, an’ I’ll knock ye down, man, though ye were as muckle as a bullock. Shame! shame ye for a man!--ye hae nae mair natural feeling than a sealchie’s bubble.”[8] The cry of shame! shame! was echoed from the other passengers, and the surly ferryman gave up the point.