There is no opposition; your lordships will please grant commission to take his oath." Hardie now renounced this ineffectual search, in which there was perhaps a little affectation, and told us the tale of poor Dunover's distresses, with a tone in which a degree of feeling, which he seemed ashamed of as unprofessional, mingled with his attempts at wit, and did him more honour.

It was one of those tales which seem to argue a sort of ill-luck or fatality attached to the hero.

A well-informed, industrious, and blameless, but poor and bashful man, had in vain essayed all the usual means by which others acquire independence, yet had never succeeded beyond the attainment of bare subsistence.

During a brief gleam of hope, rather than of actual prosperity, he had added a wife and family to his cares, but the dawn was speedily overcast.

Everything retrograded with him towards the verge of the miry Slough of Despond, which yawns for insolvent debtors; and after catching at each twig, and experiencing the protracted agony of feeling them one by one elude his grasp, he actually sunk into the miry pit whence he had been extricated by the professional exertions of Hardie.
"And, I suppose, now you have dragged this poor devil ashore, you will leave him half naked on the beach to provide for himself ?" said Halkit.
"Hark ye,"-- and he whispered something in his ear, of which the penetrating and insinuating words, "Interest with my Lord," alone reached mine.
"It is _pessimi exempli,_" said Hardie, laughing, "to provide for a ruined client; but I was thinking of what you mention, provided it can be managed--But hush! here he comes." The recent relation of the poor man's misfortunes had given him, I was pleased to observe, a claim to the attention and respect of the young men, who treated him with great civility, and gradually engaged him in a conversation, which, much to my satisfaction, again turned upon the _Causes Ce'le'bres_ of Scotland.