MARJORIE FLEMING.

BY JOHN BROWN, M.D.


One November afternoon in 1810,--the year in which "Waverley" was
resumed and laid aside again, to be finished off, its last two volumes
in three weeks, and made immortal in 1814, and when its author, by the
death of Lord Melville, narrowly escaped getting a civil appointment in
India,--three men, evidently lawyers, might have been seen escaping like
school-boys from the Parliament House, and speeding arm in arm down Bank
Street and the Mound, in the teeth of a surly blast of sleet.

The three friends sought the _bield_ of the low wall old Edinburgh boys
remember well, and sometimes miss now, as they struggle with the stout
west-wind.

The three were curiously unlike each other. One, "a little man of feeble
make, who would be unhappy if his pony got beyond a foot pace," slight,
with "small, elegant features, hectic cheek, and soft hazel eyes, the
index of the quick, sensitive spirit within, as if he had the warm heart
of a woman, her genuine enthusiasm, and some of her weaknesses." Another,
as unlike a woman as a man can be; homely, almost common, in look and
figure; his hat and his coat, and indeed his entire covering, worn to
the quick, but all of the best material; what redeemed him from
vulgarity and meanness were his eyes, deep set, heavily thatched, keen,
hungry, shrewd, with a slumbering glow far in, as if they could be