ght else; and when
informed long after, by one whose testimony was conclusive on the point,
that he had been pointed out to the young lady by some such
distinguished name as "the Cromarty Poet," and that she had come up to
her friends somewhat in a flurry, simply that she might have a nearer
look of him, he received the intelligence somewhat with surprise. All
the first interviews in all the novels I ever read are of a more
romantic and less homely cast than the special interview just related;
but I know not a more curious one.

Only a few evenings after, I met the same young lady, in circumstances
of which the writer of a tale might have made a little more. I was
sauntering, just as the sun was sinking, along one of my favourite walks
on the Hill--a tree-skirted glade--now looking out through the openings
on the ever fresh beauties of the Cromarty Firth, with its promontories,
and bays, and long lines of winding shore, and anon marking how redly
the slant light fell through intersticial gaps on pale lichened trunks
and huge boughs, in the deeper recesses of the wood--when I found myself
unexpectedly in the presence of the young lady of the previous evening.
She was sauntering through the wood as leisurely as myself--now and then
dipping into a rather bulky volume which she carried, that had not in
the least the look of a novel, and which, as I subsequently ascertained,
was an elaborate essay on Causation. We, of course, passed each other
on our several ways without sign of recognition. Quickening her pace,
however, she was soon out of sight; and I just thought, on one or two
occasions afterwards, of the apparition that had been presented as she
passed, as much in keeping with the adjuncts--the picturesque forest and
the gorgeous sunset. It would not be easy, I thought, were the large
book but away, to furnish a very lovely scene with a more suitable
figure. Shortly after, I began to meet the young lady at the charming
tea-parties of the place. Her father, a worthy man, who, from
unfortunate speculations in business, had met with severe losses, was at
this time several years dead; and his widow had come to reside in
Cromarty, on a somewhat limited income, derived from property of her
own. Liberally assisted, however, by relations in England, she had been
enabled to send her daughter to Edinburgh, where the young lady received
all the advantages which a first-rate education could confer. By some
lucky chance, she was the