ountry
round about. But John Paul minded them not so much as a swarm of flies,
and the teamster's account of the happenings at Kirkcudbright had given
them so wholesome a fear of his speech and presence as to cause them to
misdoubt their own wit, which is saying a deal of Scotchmen. But when
the bargain had been struck and John Paul gone with the 'ostler to see
to his chests, mine host thought it a pity not to have a fall out of me.

"So ye be the Buckskin laud," he said, with a wink at a leering group of
farmers; "ye hae braw gentles in America."

He was a man of sixty or thereabout, with a shrewd but not unkindly face
that had something familiar in it.

"You have discernment indeed to recognize a gentleman in Scotch
clothes," I replied, turning the laugh on him.

"Dinna raise ae Buckskin, Mr. Rawlinson," said a man in corduroy.

"Rawlinson!" I exclaimed at random, "there is one of your name in the
colonies who knows his station better."

"Trowkt!" cried mine host, "ye ken Ivie o' Maryland, Ivie my brither?"

"He is my grandfather's miller at Carvel Hall," I said.

"Syne ye maun be nane ither than Mr. Richard Carvel. Yere servan', Mr.
Carvel," and he made me a low bow, to the great dropping of jaws round
about, and led me into the inn. With trembling hands he took a packet
from his cabinet and showed me the letters, twenty-three in all, which
Ivie had written home since he had gone out as the King's passenger in
'45. The sight of them brought tears to my eyes and carried me out
of the Scotch mist back to dear old Maryland. I had no trouble in
convincing mine host that I was the lad eulogized in the scrawls, and
he put hand on the very sheet which announced my birth, nineteen years
since,--the fourth generation of Carvels Ivie had known.

So it came that the captain and I got the best chaise and pair in place
of the worst, and sat down to a breakfast such as was prepared only for
my Lord Selkirk when he passed that way, while I told the landlord of
his brother; and as I talked I remembered the day I had caught the arm
of the mill and gone the round, to find that Ivie had written of that,
too!

After that our landlord would not hear of a reckoning. I might stay a
month, a year, at the "Twa Naigs" if I wished. As for John Paul, who
seemed my friend, he would say nothing, only to advise me privately that
the man was queer company, shaking his head when I defended him. He came
to me with ten guineas, which he pre