Firth beyond. I regret-I greatly regret-that my engagements in the city have made it so late before I could reach you at Samson's Ribs, but we have time enough to collect all the characteristic flora before Sabbath morning arrives.

Haco had made a mistake of an hour in looking at his watch. The students at his back had affirmed his judgment, thinking he meant to be witty at the professor's expense.

When the professor led off again from Dunsappie to the top of Arthur's Seat, the wittier ones stayed behind, and sat down on stones, and lay on the dewy grass, and began to roar John Brown's Body.'

Sandy Baxter clung to the professor, helped him over dunes and ridges, asked him, with a deep, botanical air, whether he thought Hunter's Bog, through the continuous discharge of shots, would be likely to contain nitrogenous plants, and, altogether, was very pleasing with his inquiries.

VOL. II

'He's a sneak, that fellow,' said somebody, laying by his spud and vasculum. 'He knows that old "Tissue" always passes a man who attends his meetings. He gives a fellow who speaks through his nose fifty marks for his manner at a professional examination.'

'There you are quite wrong.

Baxter is not a

sneak at all. He is a very thorough and first-rate fellow, and sticks to the professor simply because he wants to get up botany.'

While the majority of the students went up Arthur's Seat, the minority stayed where they were, lit pipes, sang songs, threw stones into the black water of Dunsappie Loch, wished they had a glass of beer, and cried Hush!' as they listened to a mumbling voice come down to them explaining specimens as they happened to be found and presented by students.

At last, leap-frog, chaff, pipes, and loitering became unbearable; somebody said he heard 'Tissue'

making preparations for his meeting, whereupon there was a stampede in the direction of Duddingstone.

'We have plenty of time yet,' said a student. The inns are open; let's go down and have some fun. There's one of the nicest inns in the world down there, with an open garden and unrivalled beer. Who says?'

'I do!' 'I do!' 'So do I!' 'Hang "Tissue!"' 'The inn!' 'Duddingstone!' 'Hurrah! hurrah!' 'John Brown's body lies mouldering in the grave!' 'Hip, hip!' And the remainder of the students who did not choose to go to the top of the hill, the botany and the meeting, rushed to the grassy ridge above Duddingstone Loch, tumbled down with shouts, sped along the road past the old gate and the pillory, and round a corner into an inn. The songs that they sung were numerous and merry, but they gathered no flowers and they learnt no botany, and they missed hearing

the professor raise the tune. Perhaps, when Haco stood in the old pillory hours later, he really deserved to be there. As they sang their way round Samson's Ribs, they noticed that even the castles were shut up. There was nothing between Craigmillar and them but the moaning of the wind and the light of the white moon on the plain.

CHAPTER VII

A ROW AND ITS CONSEQUENCES

BOTANIZING in the spirit in which Haco botanized was of no great use. Zoologizing followed suit. He did not wish disenchantment to overtake him in his relations with the flowers and the birds; and systematic inquiry seemed to substitute for the glamour of attractive ignorance a repulsive knowledge which really did disenchant. He told Sandy, therefore, one morning, while they went down to the Botanic Gardens, that he didn't think he would compete. He would attain the dry bones