a clerk's stool. My kinsman, Mr. Stevenson of Stirling, has heard
his father mention that there had been 'something romantic' about
Alan's marriage: and, alas! he has forgotten what. It was early
at least. His wife was Jean, daughter of David Lillie, a builder
in Glasgow, and several times 'Deacon of the Wrights': the date of
the marriage has not reached me; but on 8th June 1772, when Robert,
the only child of the union, was born, the husband and father had
scarce passed, or had not yet attained, his twentieth year. Here
was a youth making haste to give hostages to fortune. But this
early scene of prosperity in love and business was on the point of
closing.

There hung in the house of this young family, and successively in
those of my grandfather and father, an oil painting of a ship of
many tons burthen. Doubtless the brothers had an interest in the
vessel; I was told she had belonged to them outright; and the
picture was preserved through years of hardship, and remains to
this day in the possession of the family, the only memorial of my
great-grandsire Alan. It was on this ship that he sailed on his
last adventure, summoned to the West Indies by Hugh. An agent had
proved unfaithful on a serious scale; and it used to be told me in
my childhood how the brothers pursued him from one island to
another in an open boat, were exposed to the pernicious dews of the
tropics, and simultaneously struck down. The dates and places of
their deaths (now before me) would seem to indicate a more
scattered and prolonged pursuit: Hugh, on the 16th April 1774, in
Tobago, within sight of Trinidad; Alan, so late as 26th May, and so
far away as 'Santt Kittes,' in the Leeward Islands--both, says the
family Bible, 'of a fiver'(!). The death of Hugh was probably
announced by Alan in a letter, to which we may refer the details of