old college chum, Mr. Lindsay_!" he
exclaimed, turning to me. "Yes, sure enough; how happy I am we should
have met! Come this way--let us get out of the streets."

We passed hurriedly through the Canongate and along the front of
Holyrood-house, and were soon in the King's Park, which seemed this
morning as if left to ourselves.

"Dear me, and this is you yourself!--and we have again met, Mr.
Lindsay!" said Ferguson; "I thought we were never to meet more. Nothing,
for a long time, has made me half so glad. And so you have been a sailor
for the last four years. Do let us sit down here in the warm sunshine,
beside St. Anthony's Well, and tell me all your story, and how you
happened to meet with brother Henry."

We sat down, and I briefly related, at his bidding, all that had
befallen me since we had parted at St. Andrew's, and how I was still a
common sailor, but, in the main, perhaps, not less happy than many who
commanded a fleet.

"Ah, you have been a fortunate fellow," he said; "you have seen much and
enjoyed much; and I have been rusting in unhappiness at home. Would that
I had gone to sea along with you!"

"Nay, now, that won't do," I replied. "But you are merely taking Bacon's
method of blunting the edge of envy. You have scarcely yet attained the
years of mature manhood, and yet your name has gone abroad over the
whole length and breadth of the land, and over many other lands besides.
I have cried over your poems three thousand miles away, and felt all the
prouder of my country for the sake of my friend. And yet you would fain
persuade me that you wish the charm reversed, and that you were just
such an obscure salt-water man as myself!"

"You remember," said my companion, "the story of the half-man,
half-marble prince of the Arabian tale. One part was a living creature,
one part a stone; but the parts were incorporated, and the mixture was
misery. I am just such a poor unhappy creature as the enchanted prince
of the story."

"You surprise and distress me," I rejoined. "Have you not accomplished
all you so fondly purposed--realized even your warmest wishes? And this,
too, in early life. Your most sanguine hopes pointed but to a name,
which you yourself perhaps was never to hear, but which was to dwell on
men's tongues when the grave had closed over you. And now the name is
gained, and you live to enjoy it. I see the _living_ part of your lot,
and it seems instinct with happiness; but in what does the _dead_,