have seen
some pretty shots, but I have never seen your better."

Then I told him that I was sailing within a month for Virginia, and he
suddenly grew solemn.

"It looks like Providence," he said, "that we two should come together.
I, too, will soon be back in the Western Seas, and belike we'll meet.
I'm something of a rover, and I never bide long in the same place, but
I whiles pay a visit to James Town, and they ken me well on the Eastern
Shore and the Accomac beaches."

He fell to giving me such advice as a traveller gives to a novice. It
was strange hearing for an honest merchant, for much of it was
concerned with divers ways of outwitting the law. By and by he was
determined to convoy me to my lodgings, for he pointed out that I was
unarmed; and I think, too, he had still hopes of another meeting with
Long Colin, his cousin.

"I leave Glasgow the morrow's morn," he said, "and it's no likely we'll
meet again in Scotland. Out in Virginia, no doubt, you'll soon be a
great man, and sit in Council, and hob-nob with the Governor. But a
midge can help an elephant, and I would gladly help you, for you had
the goodwill to help me. If ye need aid you will go to Mercer's Tavern
at James Town down on the water front, and you will ask news of Ninian
Campbell. The man will say that he never heard tell of the name, and
then you will speak these words to him. You will say 'The lymphads are
on the loch, and the horn of Diarmaid has sounded.' Keep them well in
mind, for some way or other they will bring you and me together."

Without another word he was off, and as I committed the gibberish to
memory I could hear his song going up the Saltmarket:--

"The minister kissed the fiddler's wife,
And he couldna preach for thinkin' o't."

CHAPTER V.

MY FIRST COMING TO VIRGINIA.

There are few moments in life to compare with a traveller's first sight
of a new land which is destined to be for short or long his home. When,
after a fair and speedy voyage, we passed Point Comfort, and had rid
ourselves of the revenue men, and the tides bore us up the estuary of a
noble river, I stood on deck and drank in the heady foreign scents with
a boyish ecstasy. Presently we had opened the capital city, which
seemed to me no more than a village set amid gardens, and Mr. Lambie
had come aboard and greeted me. He conveyed me to the best ordinary in
the town which stood over against the Court-house. Late in the
afternoon, just b