-not
like one of the dead--clasped in the arms of his brother, who was all
covered with dust and blood. "Fall down on your knees--in the face o'
heaven, and sing praises to God, for my brother is yet alive!"

During that Psalm, father, mother, and both their sons--the rescuer and
the rescued--and their sweet cousin too, Annie Raeburn, the orphan, were
lying embraced in speechless--almost senseless trances; for the agony of
such a deliverance was more than could well by mortal creatures be
endured.

The child himself was the first to tell how his life had been
miraculously saved. A few shrubs had for many years been growing out of
the inside of the pit, almost as far down as the light could reach, and
among them had he been entangled in his descent, and held fast. For
days, and weeks, and months, after that deliverance, few persons visited
Logan Braes, for it was thought that old Laurence's brain had received a
shock from which it might never recover; but the trouble that tried him
subsided, and the inside of the house was again quiet as before, and its
hospitable door open to all the neighbours.

Never forgetful of his primal duties had been that bold youth--but too
apt to forget the many smaller ones that are wrapt round a life of
poverty like invisible threads, and that cannot be broken violently or
carelessly, without endangering the calm consistency of all its
ongoings, and ultimately causing perhaps great losses, errors, and
distress. He did not keep evil society--but neither did he shun it: and
having a pride in feats of strength and activity, as was natural to a
stripling whose corporeal faculties could not be excelled, he frequented
all meetings where he was likely to fall in with worthy competitors, and
in such trials of power, by degrees acquired a character for
recklessness, and even violence, of which prudent men prognosticated
evil, and that sorely disturbed his parents, who were, in their quiet
retreat, lovers of all peace. With what wonder and admiration did all
the Manse-boys witness and hear reported the feats of Lawrie Logan! It
was he who, in pugilistic combat, first vanquished Black King Carey the
Egyptian, who travelled the country with two wives and a waggon of
Staffordshire pottery, and had struck the "Yokel," as he called Lawrie,
in the midst of all the tents on Leddrie Green, at the great annual
Baldernoch fair. Six times did the bare and bronzed Egyptian bite the
dust--nor did Lawrie Logan a