A mile aboon Dundee.

[Alluding, as all Scotsmen know, to the humorous old song:--
'The auld man's mare's dead,
The puir man's mare's dead,
The auld man's mare's dead,
A mile aboon Dundee.']

But credit me, Darsie, the sigh which escaped me, concerned thee
more than myself, and regarded neither the superior mettle of
your cavalry, nor your greater command of the means of
travelling. I could certainly have cheerfully ridden with you
for a few days; and assure yourself I would not have hesitated to
tax your better filled purse for our joint expenses. But you
know my father considers every moment taken from the law as a
step down hill; and I owe much to his anxiety on my account,
although its effects are sometimes troublesome. For example:

I found, on my arrival at the shop in Brown's Square, that the
old gentleman had returned that very evening, impatient, it
seems, of remaining a night out of the guardianship of the
domestic Lares. Having this information from James, whose brow
wore rather an anxious look on the occasion, I dispatched a
Highland chairman to the livery stable with my Bucephalus, and
slunk, with as little noise as might be, into my own den, where I
began to mumble certain half-gnawed and not half-digested
doctrines of our municipal code. I was not long seated, when my
father's visage was thrust, in a peering sort of way, through the
half-opened door; and withdrawn, on seeing my occupation, with a
half-articulated HUMPH! which seemed to convey a doubt of the