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                                   Wilson's

                              Tales of the Borders

                                AND OF SCOTLAND.

                    HISTORICAL, TRADITIONARY, & IMAGINATIVE,

                               WITH A GLOSSARY.


                                 REVISED BY
                             ALEXANDER LEIGHTON,
                _One of the Original Editors and Contributors_.


                                  VOL. XIX.


                                  LONDON:
                    WALTER SCOTT, 14 PATERNOSTER SQUARE,
                          AND NEWCASTLE-UPON-TYNE.
                                   1884.




                                 CONTENTS.


                                                                     Page

  THE DOMESTIC GRIEFS OF GUSTAVUS M'IVER, (_Alexander Leighton_),       1

  THE FIRST AND SECOND MARRIAGE, (_John Mackay Wilson_),               35

  THE DISSOLVED PLEDGE, (_Oliver Richardson_),                         67

  THE HAWICK SPATE, (_Alexander Campbell_),                            99

  THE AVENGER; OR, THE LEGEND OF MARY LEE, (_Alexander Leighton_),    129

  THE LORD OF HERMITAGE, (_Alexander Campbell_),                      155

  GLEANINGS OF THE COVENANT, (_Professor Thomas Gillespie_)--

    XVIII. KINALDY,                                                   165

      XIX. THE TRIALS OF THE REV. SAMUEL AUSTIN,                      174

  THE CURSE OF SCOTLAND, (_Alexander Campbell_),                      196

  LEAVES FROM THE LIFE OF ALEXANDER HAMILTON, (_John M. Wilson_),     199

  THE SPORTSMAN OF OUTFIELDHAUGH, (_Alexander Leighton_),             232

  THE SEA FIGHT, (_Anon._),                                           265




WILSON'S

TALES OF THE BORDERS,

AND OF SCOTLAND.




THE DOMESTIC GRIEFS OF GUSTAVUS M'IVER.


CHAPTER I.

GUSTAVUS'S ANTECEDENTS.

In a little house in the Canongate of Edinburgh, there lived,
not very long ago, Mr Gustavus M'Iver--(for he never would allow
himself to be called Ensign M'Iver, though that was his proper
professional designation),--as good a man as ever God put breath
in, and as faithful a soldier as ever Lord Wellington commanded in
the Peninsula. That is, doubtless, no small praise to one conceived
in sin and brought forth in iniquity; and heaven knows if it were
not as true as Jove's oath, it would never have been awarded by
us. But he was remarkable in other respects than being honest;
for he was six feet five without the aid of sock or buskin; and,
if any man were to say that he was not four feet from acromion to
acromion, he would assuredly be a big liar. But it is the head
and face of a man that we like to look at; for, after all, what
signifies (except in a warlike view, and ours is a peaceable one) a
cart-load of mere bone and muscle, bound together with thick whangs
of gristle, and yielding nothing but brute force, if it be not
surmounted by a good microcosm of a head, with a good dial-plate
to let a man know what is going on within. Do we not see every day
great clocks put on the tops of big steeples, and yet, though they
are nearer the sun than the little time-piece with the deuce a
body at all, they go like an intermitting fever, telling us at one
time that we are hurrying to the grave, and at another, that time
has nothing to do with us at all. So is it with men; and, for our
part, we could never discover any proper legitimate sympathetic
accordance between the trunk and cranium of mortals, any more than
if (like pins) they had been made in pieces and one head clapped on
a body just as the occipital condyles suited the straps to which
they are attached.

The opinion