ng no doubt that, being within sixty or seventy miles of his
residence, he should receive a speedy as well as favourable answer to his
request of pecuniary accommodation, which was owing, as he stated, to his
having been robbed after their parting. And then, with impatience enough,
though without any serious apprehension, he waited the answers of these
various letters.

It must be observed, in excuse of his correspondents, that the post was
then much more tardy than since Mr. Palmer's ingenious invention has
taken place; and with respect to honest Dinmont in particular, as he
rarely received above one letter a quarter (unless during the time of his
being engaged in a law-suit, when he regularly sent to the post-town),
his correspondence usually remained for a month or two sticking in the
postmaster's window among pamphlets, gingerbread, rolls, or ballads,
according to the trade which the said postmaster exercised. Besides,
there was then a custom, not yet wholly obsolete, of causing a letter
from one town to another, perhaps within the distance of thirty miles,
perform a circuit of two hundred miles before delivery; which had the
combined advantage of airing the epistle thoroughly, of adding some pence
to the revenue of the post-office, and of exercising the patience of the
correspondents. Owing to these circumstances Brown remained several days
in Allonby without any answers whatever, and his stock of money, though
husbanded with the utmost economy, began to wear very low, when he
received by the hands of a young fisherman the following letter:--

'You have acted with the most cruel indiscretion; you have shown how
little I can trust to your declarations that my peace and happiness are
dear to you; and your rashness has nearly occasioned the death of a young
man of the highest worth and honour. Must I say more? must I add that I
have been myself very ill in consequence of your violence and its
effects? And, alas! need I say still farther, that I have thought
anxiously upon them as they are likely to affect you, although you have
given me such slight cause to do so? The C. is gone from home for several
days, Mr. H. is almost quite recovered, and I have reason to think that
the blame is laid in a quarter different from that where it is deserved.
Yet do not think of venturing here. Our fate has been crossed by
accidents of a nature too violent and terrible to permit me to think of
renewing a correspondence which has so of