on your eating fresh herring, with the fresh-herring Presbytery
of St. Andrew's, which meets here at Mrs. Laing's to-day, and afterwards
witnessing the double ceremony.

To this I assented, and certainly never spent an evening more agreeably
than that which I divided betwixt the merry lads of St. Andrew's
Presbytery, and the fair dames and maidens of Cellardykes, who graced
the marriage ceremony. Such dancing as there was, and such screaming,
and such music, and such laughing; yet, amidst it all, Mr. and Mrs.
Laing preserved that decent decorum, which plainly said, "We will not
mar the happiness of the young; but we feel the goodness and providence
of our God too deeply, to permit us to join in the noisy part of the
festivity."

"The fair maid of Cellardykes," with her kind-hearted husband--I may
mention, for the satisfaction of my fair readers in particular--may now
be seen daily at their own door, and in their own garden, on the face of
the steep which overlooks the village. They have already lived three
years in complete happiness, and have been blessed with two as fine
healthy children as a Cellardykes sun ever rose upon. Mr. Laing has
become an elder in the church, and both husband and wife are most
exemplary in the discharge of their religious, as well as relative
duties. God has blessed them with an ample competence; and sure is the
writer of this narrative, that no poor fisherman or woman ever applied
to this worthy couple without obtaining relief.

One circumstance more, and my narrative closes. As Mr. Laing was one
evening taking a walk along the seashore, viewing the boats as they
mustered for the herring fishing, he was shot at from behind one of the
rocks, and severely wounded in the shoulder--the ball or slug-shot
having lodged in the clavicle, and refusing, for some days, to be
extracted. The hue-and-cry was immediately raised; but the guilty person
was nowhere to be seen. He had escaped in a boat, or had hid himself in
a crevice of the rock, or in some private and friendly house in the
village. Poor Thomas Laing was carried home to his distracted wife more
dead than alive; and Dr. Goodsir being called, disclosed that, in his
present state, the lead could not be extracted. Poor Sarah was never a
moment from her husband's side, who fevered, and became occasionally
delirious--talking incoherently of murder and shipwreck, and Woodburn,
and love, and marriage, and Sarah Black. All within his brain was one