I find
penciled finely on a pair of lady's cuffs that were strangely out of
place in a miner's hut.

Buchan does not know that I am going to give his story to the public
and I shall have to take chances and risk his displeasure. In that
event I have the defence of pleading that no man has the right to
withhold so good a tale from the world.

II.

IN DAYS OF INNOCENCE.

As I peer into the dim past that haunts the scenes of my childhood in
Aberdeen, Scotland, a thousand memories troop by like the scenes of a
panorama with the footlights turned low; and when I contemplate them
in a meditative hour it leaves me with as lonesome a feeling as if I
had listened to the old time song, "Home Sweet Home," which I have
heard a thousand times in distant climes, sometimes sung to crowded
audiences at the opera, and again by the pioneer as he rattled his
prairie schooner over the plains.

It is a song that never grows old and never will so long as men leave
the home of their childhood, around whose hearthstones still play
ghost-like, the recollections of bye-gone years, tenderly touching
their sympathies as they pause for a moment in their monied pursuits
in other lands.

[Illustration: SOUNDING THE DEPTHS]

The old red school house on Princeton street, with the tall lank
figure of Ellwood for its presiding master and who believed in and
practiced the command of the Holy Writ: "Spare the rod and spoil
the child," was to me in those years of tenderness, a dismal
contemplation. But Sundays had a brighter hue when Mother would
dress me in full Highland suit of tartan, and adorn my cap with an
eagle feather, surmounted with a brooch of the design of an arm
with a dagger, bearing the motto, "We fear nae fae." With my small
claymore and buckled shoes and plaid, how proudly I would walk up
to the barracks at Castle Gate, where the sentry would salute me,
and give me permission to enter.

But those days had their troubles as well as pleasures. The West North
street boys had a grievance against those of the East North street and
one Saturday both sides met in battle array, armed with wooden
swords, near the North church at Queen street. After a determined
resistance West North street was victorious, when someone presented us
with a flag. It was a common piece of bunting, but to our young heroes
it was something to be looked up to and defended with our lives before
the honor of West North street should be sullied.

That ba