The poacher eventually escaped.

This, curious as it may seem, is the man whose eloquence at the club has not been forgotten in fifty years.

"Thus did he stand," I have been told recently, "exclaiming in language sublime that the soul shall bloom in immortal youth through the ruin and wrack of time." Another member read to the club an account of his journey to Lochnagar, which was afterwards published in _Chambers's Journal_.

He was celebrated for his descriptions of scenery, and was not the only member of the club whose essays got into print.

More memorable perhaps was an itinerant match-seller known to Thrums and the surrounding towns as the literary spunk-seller.