GORDON THE GIPSEY.

IT has been tritely, because truly said, that the boldest efforts of human imagination cannot exceed the romance of real life. The best written tale is not that which most resembles the ordinary chain of events and characters, but that which, by selecting and combining them, conceals those inconsistencies and deficiencies that leave, in real life, our sense of sight unsatisfied. An author delights his reader when he exhibits incidents distinctly and naturally according with moral justice; his portraits delight us when they resemble our fellow-creatures without too accurately tracing their moles and blemishes. This elegant delight is the breathing of a purer spirit within us, that asserts its claim to a nobler and more perfect state; yet another, though an austerer kind of pleasure arises, when we consider how much of the divinity appears even in man's most erring state, and how much of "goodliness in evil."

In one of those drear midnights that were so awful to travellers in the highlands soon after 1745, a man wrapped in a large coarse plaid, strode from a stone ridge on the border of Loch Lomond into a boat which he had drawn

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from its covert. He rowed resolutely, and alone, looking carefully to the right and left, till he suffered the tide to bear his little bark into a gorge or gulf, so narrow, deep, and dark, that no escape but death seemed to await him. Precipices, rugged with dwarf shrubs and broken granite, rose more than a hundred feet on each side, sundered only by the stream, which a thirsty season had reduced to a sluggish and shallow pool. Then poising himself erect on his staff, the boatman drew three times the end of a strong chain which hung among the underwood. In a few minutes a basket descended from the pinnacle of the cliff, and having moored his boat, he placed himself in the wicker carriage, and was safely drawn into a crevice high in the wall of rock, where he disappeared.

The boat was moored, but the adventurer had not observed that it contained another passenger. Underneath a plank laid artfully along its bottom, and shrouded in a plaid of the darkest grain, another man had been lurking more than a hour before the owner of the boat entered it, and remained hidden by the darkness of the night. His purpose was answered. He had now discovered what he had sacrificed many perilous nights to obtain, a knowledge of the mode by which the owner of Drummond's Keep gained access to his impregnable fortress unsuspected. He instantly unmoored the boat, and rowed slowly back across the loch to an island near the centre. He rested on his oars, and looked down on its transparent water." It is there still," he said to himself; and draw

ing close among the rocks, leaped on dry land. A dog of the true shepherd's breed sat waiting under the bushes, and ran before him till they descended together under an archway of stones and withered branches. "Watch the boat!" said the highlander to his faithful guide, who sprang immediately away to obey him. Meanwhile his master lifted up one of the grey stones, took a bundle from underneath it, and equipped himself in such a suit as a trooper of Cameron's regiment usually wore, looked at the edge of his dirk, and returned to his boat.

That island had once belonged to the heritage of the Gordons, whose ancient family, urged by old prejudices and hereditary courage, had been foremost in the illmanaged rebellion of 1715. One of the clan of Argyle then watched a favourable opportunity to betray the laird's secret movements, and was commissioned to arrest him. Under pretence of friendship he gained entrance to his strong hold in the isle, and concealed a posse of the king's soldiers at Gordon's door. The unfortunate laird leaped from his window into the lake, and his false friend seeing his desperate efforts threw him a rope, as if in kindness, to support him, while a boat came near. That rope was meant for my neck," said Gordon, and I leave it for a traitor's." With these bitter words he sank. Cameron saw him, and the pangs of remorse came into his heart. He leaped himself into a boat, put an oar towards his drowning friend with real oaths of fidelity, but Gordon pushed it from him, and abandoned himself to death. The