estimation; and there is no doubt but he had the art to court and
please him with much hypocritical skill. He usually dined on
Sundays in the cabin. He used to come down daily after dinner for
a glass of port or whisky, often in his full rig of sou'-wester,
oilskins, and long boots; and I have often heard it described how
insinuatingly he carried himself on these appearances, artfully
combining the extreme of deference with a blunt and seamanlike
demeanour. My father and uncles, with the devilish penetration of
the boy, were far from being deceived; and my father, indeed, was
favoured with an object-lesson not to be mistaken. He had crept
one rainy night into an apple-barrel on deck, and from this place
of ambush overheard Soutar and a comrade conversing in their
oilskins. The smooth sycophant of the cabin had wholly
disappeared, and the boy listened with wonder to a vulgar and
truculent ruffian. Of Soutar, I may say tantum vidi, having met
him in the Leith docks now more than thirty years ago, when he
abounded in the praises of my grandfather, encouraged me (in the
most admirable manner) to pursue his footprints, and left impressed
for ever on my memory the image of his own Bardolphian nose. He
died not long after.

The engineer was not only exposed to the hazards of the sea; he
must often ford his way by land to remote and scarce accessible
places, beyond reach of the mail or the post-chaise, beyond even
the tracery of the bridle-path, and guided by natives across bog
and heather. Up to 1807 my grand-father seems to have travelled
much on horseback; but he then gave up the idea--'such,' he writes
with characteristic emphasis and capital letters, 'is the Plague of
Baiting.' He was a good pedestrian; at the age of fifty-eight I
find him covering seventeen miles over the moors of the Mackay