lculated; and
the strong desire to see my poor friend was dashed by the dread of being
held responsible by his parents and sisters for the accident. And so,
more than a week elapsed ere I could muster up courage enough to visit
him. I was coldly received by his mother, and, what vexed me to the
heart, coldly received by himself; and suspecting that he had been
making an ungenerous use of our late treaty, I took leave in high
dudgeon, and came away. My suspicions, however, wronged him: he had
stoutly denied, as I afterwards learned, that I had any share in the
powder; but his friends deeming the opportunity a good one for breaking
with me, had compelled him, very unwillingly, and after much
resistance, to give me up. And from this period more than two years
elapsed, though our hearts beat quick and high every time we
accidentally met, ere we exchanged a single word. On one occasion,
however, shortly after the accident, we did exchange letters. I wrote to
him from the school-form, when, of course, I ought to have been engaged
with my tasks, a stately epistle, in the style of the billets in the
"Female Quixote," which began, I remember, as follows:--"I once thought
I had a friend whom I could rely upon; but experience tells me he was
only nominal. For, had he been a real friend, no accident could have
interfered with, or arbitrary command annihilated, his affection," &c.,
&c. As I was rather an indifferent scribe at the time, one of the lads,
known as the "copperplate writers" of the class, made for me a fair copy
of my lucubration, full of all manner of elegant dashes, and in which
the spelling of every word was scrupulously tested by the dictionary.
And, in due course, I received a carefully engrossed note in reply, of
which the manual portion was performed by my old companion, but the
composition, as he afterwards told me, elaborated by some one else. It
assured me he was still my friend, but that there were "certain
circumstances" which would prevent us from meeting for the future on our
old terms. We were, however, destined to meet pretty often in the
future, notwithstanding; and narrowly missed going to the bottom
together many years after, in the Floating Manse, grown infirm in her
nether parts at the time, when he was the outed minister of Small Isles,
and I editor of the _Witness_ newspaper.

I had a maternal aunt long settled in the Highlands of Sutherland, who
was so much older than her sister, my mother, that,