in brave clothes, and marching into the kirk on Sabbath with a couple of servants carrying cushions and Bibles.  In the better class of tavern one could always meet with a Virginian or two compounding their curious drinks, and swearing their outlandish oaths.  Most of them had gone afield from Scotland, and it was a fine incentive to us young men to see how mightily they had prospered.  My uncle yielded, and it was arranged that I should sail with the first convoy of the New Year.  From the moment of the decision I walked the earth in a delirium of expectation.  That February, I remember, was blue and mild, with soft airs blowing up the river.  Down by the Broomielaw I found a new rapture in the smell of tar and cordage, and the queer foreign scents in my uncle’s warehouse.  Every skipper and greasy sailor became for me a figure of romance.  I scanned every outland face, wondering if I should meet it again in the New World.  A negro in cotton drawers, shivering in our northern dune, had more attraction for me than the fairest maid, and I was eager to speak with all and every one who had crossed the ocean.  One bronzed mariner with silver earrings I entertained to three stoups of usquebaugh, hoping for strange tales, but the little I had from him before he grew drunk was that he had once voyaged to the Canaries.  You may imagine that I kept my fancies to myself, and was outwardly only the sober merchant with a mind set on freights and hogsheads.  But whoever remembers his youth will know that such terms to me were not the common parlance of trade.  The very names of the tobaccos Negro’s Head, Sweet-scented, Oronoke, Carolina Red, Gloucester Glory, Golden Rod sang in my head like a tune, that told of green forests and magic islands.

But an incident befell ere I left which was to have unforeseen effects on my future.  One afternoon I was in the shooting alley I have spoken of, making trial of a new size of bullet I had moulded.  The place was just behind Parlane’s tavern, and some gentlemen, who had been drinking there, came out to cool their heads and see the sport.  Most of them were cock-lairds from the Lennox, and, after the Highland fashion, had in their belts heavy pistols of the old kind which folk called “dags.”  They were cumbrous, ill-made things, gaudily ornamented with silver and Damascus work, fit ornaments for a savage Highland chief, but little good for serious business, unless a man were only a pace or two from his opponent.  One of them, who had drunk less than the others, came up to me and very civilly proposed a match.  I was nothing loath, so a course was fixed, and a mutchkin of French eau de vie named as the prize.  I borrowed an old hat from the landlord which had stuck in its side a small red cockade.  The thing was hung as a target in a leafless cherry tree at twenty paces, and the cockade was to be the centre mark.  Each man was to fire three shots apiece.

Barshalloch—­for so his companions called my opponent after his lairdship—­made a great to-do about the loading, and would not be content till he had drawn the charge two—­three times.  The spin of a coin gave him first shot, and he missed the mark and cut the bole of the tree.