write it to Captain Daniel at my first opportunity.

I arose early to discover a morning gray and drear, with a mist falling
to chill the bones. News travels apace the world over, and that of John
Paul's home-coming and of his public renunciation of Scotland at the
"Hurcheon" had reached Dumfries in good time, substantiated by the
arrival of the teamster with the chests the night before. I descended
into the courtyard in time to catch the captain in his watchet-blue frock
haggling with the landlord for a chaise, the two of them surrounded by a
muttering crowd anxious for a glimpse of Mr. Craik's gardener's son, for
he had become a nine-day sensation to the country round about. But John
Paul minded them not so much as a swarm of flies, and the teamster's
account of the happenings at Kirkcudbright had given them so wholesome a
fear of his speech and presence as to cause them to misdoubt their own
wit, which is saying a deal of Scotchmen. But when the bargain had been
struck and John Paul gone with the 'ostler to see to his chests, mine
host thought it a pity not to have a fall out of me.

"So ye be the Buckskin laud," he said, with a wink at a leering group of
farmers; "ye hae braw gentles in America."

He was a man of sixty or thereabout, with a shrewd but not unkindly face
that had something familiar in it.

"You have discernment indeed to recognize a gentleman in Scotch clothes,"
I replied, turning the laugh on him.

"Dinna raise ae Buckskin, Mr. Rawlinson," said a man in corduroy.

"Rawlinson!" I exclaimed at random, "there is one of your name in the