lows:--

"DEAR NEFFY,--I never was much of a hand at spellin', an' I'm not
rightly sure o' that word, howsever, it reads all square, so ittle do.
If I had been the inventer o' writin' I'd have had signs for a lot o'
words. Just think how much better it would ha' bin to have put a
regular D like that instead o' writin' s-q-u-a-r-e. Then _round_
would have bin far better O, like that. An' crooked thus," (draws a
squiggly line); "see how significant an' suggestive, if I may say so;
no humbug--all fair an' above-board, as the pirate said, when he ran
up the black flag to the peak.

"But avast speckillatin' (shiver my timbers! but that last was a
pen-splitter), that's not what I sat down to write about. My object
in takin' up the pen, neffy, is two-fold,

"`Double, double, toil an' trouble,'

"as Macbeath said,--if it wasn't Hamlet.

"We want you to come home for a day or two, if you can git leave, lad,
about this strange affair. Minnie said she was goin' to give you a
full, true, and partikler account of it, so it's of no use my goin'
over the same course. There's that blackguard Swankie come for the
letters. Ha! it makes me chuckle. No time for more--"

This letter also concluded abruptly, and without a signature.

"There's a pretty kettle o' fish!" exclaimed Ruby aloud.

"So 'tis, lad; so 'tis," said Bremner, who at that moment had placed a
superb pot of codlings on the fire; "though why ye should say it so
positively when nobody's denyin' it, is more nor I can tell."

Ruby laughed, and retired to the mortar-gallery to work at the forge and
ponder. He always found that he pondered best while employed in
hammering, especially if his feelings were ruffled.

Seizing a mass of metal, he laid it on the anvil, and gave it five or
six heavy blows to straighten it a little, before thrusting it into the
fire.

Strange to say, these few blows of the hammer were the means, in all
probability, of saving the sloop _Smeaton_ from being wrecked on the
Bell Rock!

That vessel had been away with Mr Stevenson at Leith, and was
returning, when she was overtaken by the calm and the fog. At the
moment that Ruby began to hammer, the _Smeaton_ was within a stone's
cast of the beacon, running gently before a light air which had sprung
up.

No one on board had the least idea that the tide had swept them so near
the rock, and the ringing of the anvil was the first warning they got of