“DEAR NEFFY,—­I never was much of a hand at spellin’, an’ I’m not rightly sure o’ that word, howsever, it reads all square, so ittle do.  If I had been the inventer o’ writin’ I’d have had signs for a lot o’ words.  Just think how much better it would ha’ bin to have put a regular [Square] like that instead o’ writin’ s-q-u-a-r-e.  Then round would have bin far better O, like that.  An’ crooked thus ~~~~~; see how significant an’ suggestive, if I may say so; no humbug—­all fair an’ above-board, as the pirate said, when he ran up the black flag to the peak.

“But avast speckillatin’ (shiver my timbers! but that last was a pen-splitter), that’s not what I sat down to write about.  My object in takin’ up the pen, neffy, is two-fold,

‘Double, double, toil an’ trouble’,

as Macbeath said,—­if it wasn’t Hamlet.

“We want you to come home for a day or two, if you can git leave, lad, about this strange affair.  Minnie said she was goin’ to give you a full, true, and partikler account of it, so it’s of no use my goin’ over the same course.  There’s that blackguard Swankie come for the letters.  Ha! it makes me chuckle.  No time for more------”

This letter also concluded abruptly, and without a signature.

“There’s a pretty kettle o’ fish!” exclaimed Ruby aloud.

“So ’tis, lad; so ’tis,” said Bremner, who at that moment had placed a superb pot of codlings on the fire; “though why ye should say it so positively when nobody’s denyin’ it, is more nor I can tell.”

Ruby laughed, and retired to the mortar-gallery to work at the forge and ponder.  He always found that he pondered best while employed in hammering, especially if his feelings were ruffled.

Seizing a mass of metal, he laid it on the anvil, and gave it five or six heavy blows to straighten it a little, before thrusting it into the fire.

Strange to say, these few blows of the hammer were the means, in all probability, of saving the sloop Smeaton from being wrecked on the Bell Rock!

That vessel had been away with Mr. Stevenson at Leith, and was returning, when she was overtaken by the calm and the fog.  At the moment that Ruby began to hammer, the Smeaton was within a stone’s cast of the beacon, running gently before a light air which had sprung up.

No one on board had the least idea that the tide had swept them so near the rock, and the ringing of the anvil was the first warning they got of their danger.

The lookout on board instantly sang out, “Starboard har-r-r-d! beacon ahead!” and Ruby looked up in surprise, just as the Smeaton emerged like a phantom-ship out of the fog.  Her sails fluttered as she came up to the wind, and the crew were seen hurrying to and fro in much alarm.

Mr. Stevenson himself stood on the quarter-deck of the little vessel, and waved his hand to assure those on the beacon that they had sheered off in time, and were safe.