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though the road is beset with thorns and briars; but there are in-expressible delights and pleasures in that wilderness, which not al! the vices in the world can balance. This exhortation probably may be the last that may come from my lips; but, indeed, you have need of advice every moment, and want the leading-strings of a child, yet neither want you sense or understanding: how comes it then you make such bad use of them? Are not all the miserable catastrophies of profuse and wicked livers sufficient to deter you from your licentious course of life? If gibbets and gallows could have any influence on a mind, unless lost to all sense of goodness, certainly the melancholy ends so many monthly make here, should be a means of opening your eyes and reclaiming you. But, alas! the wound, I fear, is too deep, and no medicines can now prevail; your enormities are of such an egregious dye, that no water can wash it out. Well, if neither the cruel consequences of an iniquitous and mispent life, nor all the advice which either your friends and relations can give you; if good examples, terrors, or death, cannot awaken you from your profound lethargy and inactivity of mind, I may well say your case is exceedingly deplorable, and what, for my part, I would not be involved in for ten thousand worlds. You cannot surely but know what you have to depend on now your friends and relations abandon you, for you are styled a murderer; and the man that has once dipt his hands in blood, can never expect enjoyment of any felicity either in this or the next world; for there is an internal sensation, called conscience, which brings an everlasting sting along with it, when the deeds of the body are heinous and black. Indeed, some may pretend to stifle their iniquities for a considerable time, but the pause is but short; conscience breaks through all the barriers, and presents before the eyes of the guilty person his wickedness in frightful colours. What would not some give to be relieved of their racking nights and painful moments? When freed from the amusents of the day, they might wish to rest, but cannot. 'Tis then that Providence thinks fit to give them a foretaste of those severities, even in this life, which will be millions of times increased in the next."

Here the good old man shed a flood of tears, which pity and compassion had forced from his eyes, nor could Sawney forbear shedding a tear or two at hearing; but it was all pretence, and an imitation of the crocodile; for he was determined to take this reverend old gentleman out of the world, to get possession of his estate, which, for want of male issue, was unavoidably to devolve upon him after his death. With this view, after he had made an end of his exhortation, he stepped up, and, without once speaking, thrust a dagger into his heart, and so ended his life; and, seeing the servant-maid come into the room at the noise of her master's falling.