a laugh of derision;--"why, you might as well ask my son James's
experience to supply a case" about thirlage. No, no, my good friend, I
have lived by the law, and in the law, all my life; and when you seek
the impulses that make soldiers desert and shoot their sergeants and
corporals, and Highland drovers dirk English graziers, to prove themselves
men of fiery passions, it is not to a man like me you should come. I could
tell you some tricks of my own trade, perhaps, and a queer story or two of
estates that have been lost and recovered. But, to tell you the truth, I
think you might do with your Muse of Fiction, as you call her, as many an
honest man does with his own sons in flesh and blood."

"And how is that, my dear sir?"

"Send her to India, to be sure. That is the true place for a Scot to
thrive in; and if you carry your story fifty years back, as there is
nothing to hinder you, you will find as much shooting and stabbing there
as ever was in the wild Highlands. If you want rogues, as they are so
much in fashion with you, you have that gallant caste of adventurers,
who laid down their consciences at the Cape of Good Hope as they went
out to India, and forgot to take them up again when they returned. Then,
for great exploits, you have in the old history of India, before
Europeans were numerous there, the most wonderful deeds, done by the
least possible means, that perhaps the annals of the world can afford."

"I know it," said I, kindling at the ideas his speech inspired. "I
remember in the delightful pages of Orme, the interest which mingles in
his narratives, from the very small number of English which are engaged.
Each officer of a regiment becomes known to you by name, nay, the
non-commissioned officers and privates acquire an individual share of
interest. They are distinguished among the natives like the Spaniards