strophe
was to be wound up. A milestone caught one of the wheels of the gig,
canted it over, and threw Johnny sprawling on the road with a broken
leg; his friend, although also thrown, escaping wholly unhurt.

"Aweel, here it's at last," said Johnny, sitting up in the mud amongst
which he had been planted, and fully believing that his injuries were
fatal. "Here it's at last. I'm clean dune for noo, after a' my escapes.
It may be noo plainly seen, I think," he went on, "that some evil spirit
has had me in its power, for these six weeks past at ony rate, and has
been gowfin' me about the world like a fitba', to kill me wi' a gig at
last."

Luckily, Johnny's injuries did not prove so serious as he had feared
they would do; and no less fortunate was it that the accident to which
they were owing happened not far from a small country town in which
there was a resident surgeon. To the latter place Johnny was immediately
removed on a temporary bier, hastily constructed for the purpose by some
labouring men who chanced to be near the spot where the accident
happened, and there he lay for six entire weeks, when the surgeon above
alluded to, and who had attended him all that time, intimated to him
that he might now venture to return home. Delighted with the
intelligence, Johnny instantly acted on it, and next day entered
Carlisle triumphantly in a post-chaise--not looking, nor really being,
after all, much the worse for his unprecedented adventures, save and
except a lameness in the injured limb, which ever after imparted to his
movements the graceful up-and-down motion produced by that peculiar
longitudinal proportion of the nether limbs, designated by the
descriptive definition of "a short leg and a shorter." Having, with this
last occurrence, concluded the story of Johnny's disasters, we have only
to add that Johnny has never, to this good hour, got the length of
Brechin--nor will, he says, ever again make the attempt.

THE PROFESSOR'S TALES.[4]
THE MOUNTAIN STORM.

[4] The author of these stories (to be continued), the well-known
Professor Thomas Gillespie, was one of the principal writers in
_Blackwood_ during the "storm and stress" period of that magazine. As an
author, his peculiarity consisted in vivid descriptions of scenery and
incidents coming within the range of a very eccentric experience, all
given with a versatility and _abandon_ which he could not restrain, and
which, being the reflex of a poetical enthu