my reader suppose to have been the comrade?

I, even I, was the person named !

A more unfortunate invention could hardly have been made. I have given in this narrative an account of how I employed my time after I left Forsyth's on that evening. Then witnesses, in ample numbers, came to prove that I was never near the scene of the affray between the time of my carrying off my winnings and Captain Menzies' appearance, late at night, and after the bailie was stabbed, at Mr. Macleod's. I myself, who was accused of no misbehavior in the matter, and therefore had no reason for making mystery, gave evidence to the effect that I knew nothing whatever about any part of the business, having been elsewhere engaged while it was in progress.

There was, I confess, in this perplexing matter one circumstance which made me doubt whether the Captain could be wilfully and recklessly lying in the account which he gave of the affray--I allude to the terror and horror which he manifested when he recognized me afterward in Miss Macleod's drawing-room. If he thought that he had stabbed me to the heart an hour or more before, 'twere little wonder that my appearance there --calm and sound-should have, for the moment, deprived him of his reason. And I began to think that the frenzied gambler, distracted by wine and his losses, had really, through some hallucination, imagined that he had struck me when he wounded the bailie.

But I ought to give Menzies' account of the whole affair, as he thought proper to render it. It was authentically given to the public at last.

Menzies declared that, when he returned from the offices to the lobby at Forsyth's, on the evening when he and I played together, he found me waiting for him, as had been arranged between us. He left the house (so he said) with me, and, in order to observe the lively condition of the streets, induced me to walk toward what was subsequently the scene of the bailie's misfortune, which was some way distant from our club. On our way thither we got into a dispute which waxed warm, and then hotter and hotter. At last I made a personal attack on him, and he, purely in

self-defence, drew a dagger, and aimed at me a blow which fell on the unhappy M'Cosh. He carried the dagger because of the excited crowds in the streets. He had borrowed it from the steward at Forsyth's during the interview with him before he left.

Now this difficulty about Menzies' companion was never satisfactorily dispelled. That somebody had accompanied him there could be no doubt; but who was that somebody? Menzies declared that I was the man-an assertion which I indignantly and solemnly deny; an assertion which has been, by overwhelming evidence, disproved in a court of law. Yet the disproval is only a very partial solution; the desideratum was that this person, so essential to the due exposition of the case, should be identified, and he never was.

Many times there came over my mind strange ideas to which I could not venture to give utterance, and which, indeed, I endeavored, though not successfully, to banish from my mind. Mr. Macleod came cruelly near to my secret unhappiness when, one day at dinner at his house, he said, jestingly, "Now, Mr. Cameron, if we could only take a Highland liberty with your personality, and establish that you have a double, or second self, the law might be satisfied; without that, it has to deal with a very strange mystery." I knew more about such dualities than he did. They had not operated to my disadvantage, so far, but quite the contrary.

Seeing, then, that the idea of a second ego, though only playfully entertained, had entered into another human mind, I began to give it freer admission into mine. And it was not long before I framed a conjecture of the course which events had taken. My belief was, and still is, that Menzies, when he came into Forsyth's lobby, did see me, or what he took to be me. He went among the crowds with me (as he thought) at his elbow; and he led the way to the lone spot where the blow was struck, his companion not objecting to, but rather encouraging, the movement thither. Then there came the quarrel and the blow. The other I put himself close to Bailie M'Cosh, and then disappeared as the stab was delivered. This explanation can readily be accepted by a man

who knows what I know of magical matters. But there still remains the unpleasant reflection that the bailie received a serious injury simply, as it were, that my affairs might go on in greater prosperity. But further rumination brought more light and more contentment even on this head. The bailie, as I now began to see, was doomed to mischance that night. He got away from it in one form, and Mr. Macleod was near to becoming his substitute; but he fell in with the inevitable in another form. Let me add also, that I do not believe one syllable about the quarrel: that, I am sure, was a lie invented by Menzies. If I can understand any thing, I perceive most plainly that Menzies intended to murder me that night; and that he would have done it had I, and not my simulacrum, been with him. I recall the sudden manner in which, toward the end of our play, he changed the fierceness which he had been displaying all the evening into gay politeness; how he proposed that we should walk together; and how he left me for a few minutes, probably to make prep arations for the foul deed. He was heard, just before he struck, to accuse his companion of having cheated and ruined him. Now I remember the strong impulse by which I was prompted to depart from Forsyth's without waiting for him, and think myself well out of the tangles of that weird night.

Carried away by these ideas, which I have never uttered to a living soul, and can only reveal to my posterity, I have strayed far from the course of my narrative. Let me resume the thread. Bailie M'Cosh's wound was soon found not to be mortal: shortly it appeared that it was not dangerous, only severe. The fact that no homicide had occurred, tended to, in some degree, mitigate the public indignation against Menzies; the absence of all animus, and the conviction that he must have been demented on the occasion, further helped him; and then the impenetrable mystery about his companion left a haze about juries and judges, and inclined them to a lenient view of his case. He escaped with six months' imprisonment where many thought he ought to have been hanged.

Of course he disappeared from the

society of which I never thought him an ornament, thus clearing the stage for me. Everything, indeed, seemed to have been working in conspiracy for the furtherance of my desires. I had earned Mr. Macleod's favor and gratitude; I was as prosperous as I had been before my fall; my rival was disposed of,and all this was brought about by an unintelligible power, while I remained little more than passive, following most extraordinary advice.

Although I could not but be intensely interested in the trial and sentence of Menzies (which were not concluded until about three months after the evening when the premature intelligence of the capture of Buonaparte was received), I am happy to say that throughout this period I had other interests and other occupations which were of no small importance. Mr. Macleod, after the evening above-named, was only too ready to discard Captain Menzies from his good graces. Of course that gallant person, being in custody, could do nothing in the way of active pretension to Miss Macleod's hand. Her father had evidently been converted to a belief in my merits; he was profuse in his attentions, and "oft invited me." allowed to be the escort of Aline and Mrs. Fergus Fraser, or whichever female friend she chose to go abroad with, in their morning excursions. Everybody conspired to give me the opportunities that I used to long in vain for; and I so used them that, long before Menzies' fate was sealed in the law courts, my fortune as the accepted lover and future husband of my adored Aline was secured. Mr. Macleod, in accordance with the general approval of me which of late he had been at no pains to conceal, readily sanctioned the engagement, and promised to be most liberal in the endowment of his daughter. The houses of Cameron and Macleod were all astir at the prospect of the alliance.

Our wedding took place in the autumn of 1815 with much circumstance and much gayety. Maitland was my groomsman. I will not give further particulars, but say that I was supremely happy, and that I am to this day well pleased with the wife of my choice.

It must have been two years after my marriage, when my eldest son was an

་་

infant of only a few months old, that I went with my dear wife and my infant heir for an excursion to my Shetland house, Quarda. There was little change among the servants since I had left them. The man who had seen my resemblance in the study was still employed about the property, and he came to express his delight at my reappearance, and the relief of mind that he experienced at finding that he had been mistaken in his forebodings. "After what ye ken o'," said he, I never thought to see your face again; yet here ye stand sound and hearty. I'll think nae mair o' thae auld-wives' tales." I wish to make known also that, immediately after my return to Quarda, I examined the secure recess in which I firmly believed that I had deposited the heptagon and crystal. There I found Maggie's cordial wrapped up and placed exactly as I had enveloped and set the other article. There is a possibility of a mistake having been made; if so, I must have lost my wits for the moment in which I made it, and it was a lucky error for me, as I should have been without guidance, and should probably have lost courage after my return to Edinburgh, had not the heptagon so unexpectedly turned up for my relief.

It is true that I was sound and hearty as the servant had said, and I may add that I was prosperous. The causes of my prosperity I hardly understood myself, while, at the same time, there was nothing connected with it that need cause me the slightest self-reproach. Nevertheless, out of it had arisen a little secret dissatisfaction, which, now that I had a son who would, as I hoped, succeed to my property and social position, was much increasing. My little cross was this. It was a most natural thing that my wife should inquire how it came about that I, after having suddenly left Edinburgh, a ruined and despairing man, so soon reappeared. She did speak of this both before and after our marriage. I told her in reply what was strictly true-namely, that I found absence from her insupportable, and that, at last, throwing prudence aside, I had rushed back to the capital, hoping for hardly any greater gratification than to look on her beauty from a distance; that fortune had enormously and unex

pectedly rewarded this movement of true love and admiration, and brought me to the fulfilment of my dearest wishes.

The above was, as I have said, strictly true; but every one who has read the foregoing narrative must be aware that it was not the whole truth, and that I could not reveal the whole truth to her without leading her to doubt my sanity or the purity of my religious belief. And this impossibility of telling the whole truth raised in my mind the suspicion that a commerce which I dared not acknowledge could not be altogether right. Then I occupied myself with the question, Where did I go wrong? and I distinctly and honestly say that, setting aside the fact that, after my first acquaintance with my strange visitor and resemblance, I did voluntarily bring about other conferences, there was nothing which seemed to call for remorse. I had been instigated to do nothing, I had done nothing, dishonorable or dishonest. On the other hand, I had received incalculable benefit. I had made no compact of any kind, and did not feel that I had in any way compromised myself. The good genius, or whatever it was which wrought for me, had been propitiated by an ancestor whom I never saw. I had no evidence that even he had procured the goodwill of the genius by illicit means.

Notwithstanding that I thus made a good case for myself, I think I should have ended the doubt by destroying, as summarily as old Prospero did, all relics and appliances of the weird studies, had it not struck me forcibly that this sprite, this influence, was an heirloom. Though I might, through tenderness of conscience, choose to separate myself from such a power, had I any right to deprive the eldest son of my line, for as long as that line may endure, of what had proved in my own case to be a potent and beneficent auxiliary?

The end of this self-communion was, first, That in future the intercourse with the invisible world should never be resorted to by myself except in the most urgent necessity; second, That I would remove from their present place in the study at Quarda, and carefully secure, all the remains of my grandfather's mystical studies; third, That I would

prepare for the use of my son and successor (whom alone, after my death, these mysteries could concern) a clear account of the power which he would possess as the heir of Angus Cameron, of the place where the treasures of the said Angus were now deposited, and of the manner in which (so far as my experience went) the heptagonal box was to be used.

The instructions to my son and successor under this head will be found by him in paper No. 8 of the blue series.

Having now stated, for the information of my posterity (who are not to peruse

these papers until sixty years from this present 1825, my eldest son being elsewhere instructed as to matters which concern himself separately), these curious passages in my history, of which no human being save myself is at the time of this writing conscious, I go on to narrate an interesting circumstance in the life of my brother Donald, the sailor. He, etc., etc.

[The MS. here turns to a totally new subject, and it is thought convenient to extract no more of it for the present.]

-Blackwood's Magazine.

IN 1843, twelve years after the open ing of the Liverpool and Manchester line, railway building had almost come to a standstill. Some two thousand miles of line had by this time been opened; most of the great towns were already provided with railway connections, and at this point, under the influence of a long and severe depression of trade, progress was for the moment arrested. A slim pamphlet of thirty-two pages, with ample margins and widespaced columns, but bearing already the familiar name of "Bradshaw," was more than sufficient to contain the timetables of all the trains of Great Britain; but competent observers were convinced that all the lines it would pay to construct were already made. For instance, it was gravely argued that the Lancaster and Carlisle (a line that in fact paid enormous dividends for years before it was absorbed into the North Western) would prove a most disastrous speculation." At least, it would be the height of folly to construct it as a double line. It was evident, said the wiseacres, that it could never have any goods traffic; and as for passengers, unless the crows were to contract with the railway people to be conveyed at low fares," where could they be expected to come from? The through traffic could be conveyed almost as expeditiously and far more cheaply in the "splendid steamships which run to Liverpool

in sixteen or seventeen hours from Greenock."

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To

Indeed, there is nothing which strikes one more forcibly in the perusal of the railway literature of this period than the entire unconsciousness even of railway men themselves of the revolution they were working. Nowhere is this better shown than in the different methods that were proposed for conducting the traffic. Practically the locomotive, as we have it to-day, capable of working up to 1000 horse-power, was already there. The multitubular boiler and the steam-blast had long been in common use. But neither the public nor even the specialists were convinced that the right system had been hit upon. say nothing of a patent aërial steamcarriage which is to convey passengers, goods, and despatches through the air, performing the journey between London and India in four days, and travelling at the rate of 75 to 100 miles per hour,'' all kinds of substitutes for locomotives were being sought for. One day the Globe reports that a professional gentleman at Hammersmith has invented an entirely new system of railway carriage, which may be propelled without the aid of steam at an extraordinary speed, exceeding 60 miles an hour, with comparative safety without oscillation, which will no doubt become the ordinary mode of railway travelling for short distances, as the railway and

46

carriages may be constructed and kept in repair for less than one-fourth of the usual expense. Another day the Edinburgh and Glasgow railway have, says a Scotch writer," the discernment to employ Mr. Davidson, a gentleman of much practical knowledge and talent," to construct for them an electro-magnetic carriage. The carriage, 16 feet long by 7 feet wide, was duly placed upon the rails, and "propelled by eight powerful electro-magnets, about a mile and a half along the railway, travelling at the rate of upward of 4 miles an hour, a rate which might be increased by giving greater power to the batteries, and enlarging the diameter of the wheels.

The practicability of the scheme is (we are assured) placed beyond doubt,' and its simplicity, economy, safety, and compactness render it a far more valuable motive power than that clumsy, dangerous, and costly machine the steam-engine."

Then again, Messrs. Taylor and Conder, C. E., patented an ingenious system by which a carriage was to be drawn along the line "by the muscular power of the two guards who, as it is, constantly accompany it." The system, which is at the present moment in use for towing purposes on many German rivers, the Elbe for one, required that an endless rope should be laid along the line, and wound on to a drum which was attached to the carriage, and made to revolve by force, manual or mechanical, supplied from inside the carriage itself. Next Mr. England, the engineer of the London and Croydon Railway, made a manumotive railway carriage, very light and elegant in appearance, and capable of carrying seven or eight persons at the rate of 18 miles an hour." "We have no doubt" (says a railway newspaper) "that these machines will come into general use, as they will effect considerable saving to the company in the expense of running an engine.' Unfortunately none of these fine promises came to much. Mr. England's manumotive carriage, under the more humble name of a trolley, is often employed on country lines to convey navvies or surface men to or from their work. And the endless rope and drum system is in some instances of unusually steep inclines used to let a train down

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into a station, but it can hardly be said to have revolutionized railway travelling. Mr. Davidson, like many another inventor, was rudely checked by the cost of experiments and the stringency of the Patent Laws; and after forty more years have been devoted to their improvement, electric railways are still no better than a scientific toy. The aërial steam carriage, a most formidable affair, with a frame 150 feet long by 30 feet wide, covered with silk, and a tail 50 feet in addition, went so far as to get itself patented. It only (so Samuel Rogers said) resembled a bird in one respect-it had a bill-in Parliament; but on one occasion, in the lively imagination of a writer in the Glasgow Constitutional, who succeeded in hoaxing several of its English contemporaries, it had a most prosperous trial trip.

For

The locomotive had, however, more serious competitors than these. years the London and Blackwall Railway was worked by stationary engines, dragging the carriages with a wire rope, having a total length of about eight miles. And on this line, among the first, the electric telegraph was used, in order that the engineer at Blackwall or Fenchurch Street might know when to begin to wind up or let go his rope. But the wear and tear was too much; there were perpetual delays, owing to the rope breaking, and the cost of repairs and renewals was something immense. The Sunderland and Durham also was worked with a rope, at first of hemp and afterward of wire. On other similar local lines, such as the Edinburgh and Dalkeith, or the Dundee and Arbroath, the carriages were still drawn by horses. In Ireland again, the continuation of the Dublin and Kingstown Railway on to Killiney and Bray was constructed to be worked by atmospheric engines, and it was proposed to work the line from Exeter to Plymouth by water-power. Water-power, however, was abandoned, and the atmospheric system adopted, which was so far at least a success, that on one occasion the 8 miles between Exeter and Starcross were covered at the rate of 70 miles an hour.

Even where steam locomotives were employed, the slowness to believe in the capabilities of the locomotive engine