and I took them to you." What afterwards befell the
"little doggies," I know not; but trivial as the incident may seem, it
exercised a marked influence on the circumstances and destiny of at
least two generations of creatures higher in the scale than themselves.
The boy, as he stubbornly refused to return to the farm-house, had to be
sent on shipboard, agreeably to his wish, as a cabin-boy; and the writer
of these chapters was born, in consequence, a sailor's son, and was
rendered, as early as his fifth year, mainly dependent for his support
on the sedulously plied but indifferently remunerated labours of his
only surviving parent, at the time a sailor's widow.

The little boy of the farm-house we a descended from a long line of
seafaring men,--skilful and adventurous sailors,--some of whom had
coasted along the Scottish shores as early as the times of Sir Andrew
Wood and the "bold Bartons," and mayhap helped to man that "verrie
monstrous schippe the Great Michael," that "cumbered all Scotland to get
her to sea." They had taken as naturally to the water as the
Newfoundland dog or the duckling. That waste of life which is always so
great in the naval profession had been more than usually so in the
generation just passed away. Of the boy's two uncles, one had sailed
round the world with Anson, and assisted in burning Paita, and in
boarding the Manilla galleon; but on reaching the English coast he
mysteriously disappeared, and was never more heard of. The other uncle,
a remarkably handsome and powerful man,--or, to borrow the homely but
not inexpressive language in which I have heard him described, "as
_pretty_ a fellow as ever stepped in shoe-leather,"--perished at sea in
a storm; and several years after, the boy's father, when entering the
Firth of Cromarty, was struck overboard, during a sudden gust, by the
boom of his vessel, and, apparently stunned by the blow, never rose
again. Shortly after, in the hope of screening her son from what seemed
to be the hereditary fate, his mother had committed the boy to the
charge of a sister, married to a farmer of the parish, and now the
mistress of the farm-house of Ardavell; but the family death was not to
be so avoided; and the arrangement terminated, as has been seen, in the
transaction beside the pond.

In course of time the sailor boy, despite of hardship and rough usage,
grew up into a singularly robust and active man, not above the middle
size,--for his height never excee