oble church, its
massive palace, and its sweet lake, still mottled by the hereditary
swans whose progenitors had sailed over its waters in the days when
James IV. worshipped in the spectre aisle, formed a delightful place of
retreat, little frequented by the inhabitants of the town, but only all
the more my own in consequence; and in which I used to feel the fatigue
of the day's figuring and calculation drop away into the cool breezy
air, like cobwebs from an unfolded banner, as I climbed among the ruins,
or sauntered along the grassy shores of the loch. My stay at Linlithgow
was somewhat prolonged, by the removal, first of the accountant of the
branch, and then of its agent, who was called south to undertake the
management of a newly-erected English bank; but I lost nothing by the
delay. An admirable man of business, one of the officials of the parent
bank in Edinburgh (now its agent in Kirkcaldy, and recently provost of
the place), was sent temporarily to conduct the business of the agency;
and I saw, under him, how a comparative stranger arrived at his
conclusions respecting the standing and solvency of the various
customers with whom, in behalf of the parent institute, he was called on
to deal. And, finally, my brief term of apprenticeship expired--about
two months in all--I returned to Cromarty; and, as the opening of the
agency there waited only my arrival, straightway commenced my new course
as an accountant. My minister, when he first saw me seated at the desk,
pronounced me "at length fairly caught;" and I must confess I did feel
as if my latter days were destined to differ from my earlier ones, well
nigh as much as those of Peter of old, who, when he was "young, girded
himself, and walked whither he would, but who, when old, was girded by
others, and carried whither he would not."

Two long years had to pass from this time ere my young friend and I
could be united--for such were the terms on which we had to secure the
consent of her mother; but, with our union in the vista, we could meet
more freely than before; and the time passed not unpleasantly away. For
the first six months of my new employment, I found myself unable to make
my old use of the leisure hours which, I found, I could still command.
There was nothing very intellectual, in the higher sense of the term, in
recording the bank's transactions, or in summing up columns of figures,
or in doing business over the counter; and yet the fatigue induced was