lp me on with this coat."

Christie had brought it.

"Yes, my lord," said Saunders, briskly, his second nature reviving.

His lordship, while putting on the coat and hat, undertook to cool Mr.
Saunders's aristocratic prejudices.

"Should Alexander Liston and I be drowned," said he, coolly, "when our
bones come ashore, you will not know which are the fisherman's and which
the viscount's." So saying, he joined the enterprise.

"I shall pray for ye, lad," said Christie Johnstone, and she retired for
that purpose.

Saunders, with a heavy heart, to the nearest tavern, to prepare an
account of what he called "Heroism in High Life," large letters, and the
usual signs of great astonishment!!!!! for the _Polytechnic Magazine._

The commander of the distressed vessel had been penny-wise. He had
declined a pilot off the Isle of May, trusting to fall in with one close
to the port of Leith; but a heavy gale and fog had come on; he knew
himself in the vicinity of dangerous rocks; and, to make matters worse,
his ship, old and sore battered by a long and stormy voyage, was leaky;
and unless a pilot came alongside, his fate would be, either to founder,
or run upon the rocks, where he must expect to go to pieces in a quarter
of an hour.

The Newhaven boat lay in comparatively smooth water, on the lee side of
the pier.

Our adventurers got into her, stepped the mast, set a small sail,
and ran out! Sandy Liston held the sheet, passed once round the
belaying-pin, and whenever a larger wave than usual came at them, he
slacked the sheet, and the boat, losing her way, rose gently, like a
cork, upon seas that had seemed about to swallow her.

But seen from the shore it was enough to make the most experienced
wince; so completely was this wooden shell lost to sight, as she
descended from a wave, that each time her reappearance seemed a return
from the dead.

The weather was misty--the boat was soon lost sight of; the story
remains ashore.

CHAPTER XIV.

IT was an hour later; the natives of the New Town had left the pier, and
were about their own doors, when three Buckhaven fishermen came
slowly up from the pier; these men had arrived in one of their large
fishing-boats, which defy all weather.

The men came slowly up; their petticoat trousers were drenched, and
their neck-handkerchiefs and hair were wet with spray.

At the foot of the New Town they stood still and whispered to each
other.

There was something about th