rd, and the adored of the two Duncans. Yet she
danced just as lightly as a cow, and shook her fat sides and jumped and
bounded through the Scotch reels, much in the same fashion that they
did, when,

"She up and wolloped o'er the green,
For brawly she could frisk it."

Marion had had many wooers since she came on board; but she laughed at
all her lovers, and if they attempted to take any liberties with her,
she threatened to call them out if they did not keep their distance, for
she had "a lad o' her ain in Canada, an' she didna care a bodle for them
an' their clavers."

Yet, in spite of her boasted constancy, it was pretty evident to Flora
that Rab Duncan was fiddling his way fast into the buxom Marion's heart;
and she thought it more than probable that he would succeed in
persuading her to follow his fortunes instead of seeking a home with
her brother and her old sweetheart in the far West.

There was one sour-looking puritanical person on board, who regarded the
music and dancing with which the poor emigrants beguiled the tedium of
the long voyage with silent horror. He was a minister of some dissenting
church; but to which of the many he belonged Flora never felt
sufficiently interested in the man to inquire. His countenance exhibited
a strange mixture of morose ill-humour, shrewdness, and hypocrisy. While
he considered himself a vessel of grace chosen and sanctified, he looked
upon those around him as vessels of wrath only fitted for destruction.
In his eyes they were already damned, and only waited for the execution
of their just sentence. Whenever the dancing commenced he went below and
brought up his Bible, which he spread most ostentatiously on his knees,
turning up the whites of his eyes to heaven, and uttering very audible
groans between the pauses in the music. What the subject of his
meditations were, is best known to himself: but no one could look at his
low head, sly, sinister-looking eyes and malevolent scowl, and imagine
him a messenger of the glad tidings that speak of peace and good-will to
man. He seemed like one who would rather call down the fire from heaven
to destroy, than learn the meaning of the Christ-spoken text--"I will
have mercy and not sacrifice."

Between this man and Mr. Lootie a sort of friendship had sprung up. They
might constantly be seen about ten o'clock P.M. seated beneath the shade
of the boat, wrangling and disputing about contested points of faith,
contradicti