signed to the stranger Cleveland. Anxious, however, to suppress the feelings of his own disappointment, which he felt it was neither wise to entertain nor manly to display, he approached his fair neighbours, to whom he had been so acceptable at table, with the purpose of inviting one of them to become his partner in the dance. But the awfully ancient old lady, even the Lady Glowrowrum, who had only tolerated the exuberance of her nieces' mirth during the time of dinner, because her situation rendered it then impossible for her to interfere, was not disposed to permit the apprehended renewal of the intimacy implied in Mertoun's invitation. She therefore took upon herself, in the name of her two nieces, who sat pouting beside her in displeased silence, to inform Mordaunt, after thanking him for his civility, that the hands of her nieces were engaged for that evening; and, as he continued to watch the party at a little distance, he had an opportunity of being convinced that the alleged engagement was a mere apology to get rid of him, when he saw the two good-humoured sisters join the dance, under the auspices of the next young men who asked their hands. Incensed at so marked a slight, and unwilling to expose himself to another, Mordaunt Mertoun drew back from the circle of dancers, shrouded himself amongst the mass of inferior persons who crowded into the bottom of the room as spectators, and there, concealed from the observation of others, digested his own mortification as well as he could, (that is to say, very ill,) and with all the philosophy of his age-that is to say, with none at all. CHAPTER II. A torch for me-let wantons, light of heart, Romeo and Juliet. THE youth, says the moralist Johnson, cares not for the boy's hobby-horse, nor the man for the youth's mistress; and therefore the distress of Mordaunt Mertoun, when excluded from the merry dance, may seem trifling to many of my readers, who would, nevertheless, think they did well to be angry if deposed from their usual place in an assembly of a different kind. There lacked not amusement, however, for those whom the dance did not suit, or who were not happy enough to find a partner to their liking. Halcro, now completely in his element, had assembled around him an audience, to whom he was declaiming his poetry with all the enthusiasm of glorious John himself, and receiving in return the usual degree of applause allowed to minstrels who recite their own rhymes-so long at least as the author is within hearing of the criticism. Halcro's poetry might indeed have interested the antiquary as well as the admirer of the Muses, for several of his pieces were translations or imitations from the Scaldic sages, which continued to be sung by the fishermen of these islands even until a very late period; insomuch, that when Gray's poems first found their way to Orkney, the old people recognized at once, in the ode of the "Fatal Sisters," the Runic rhimes which had amused or terrified their infancy under the title of the Magicians, and which the fishers of North Ronaldsha, and other remote isles, used still to sing when asked for a Norse ditty. Half-listening, half-lost in his own reflections, Mordaunt Mertoun stood near the door of the apartment, and in the outer ring of the little circle formed around old Halcro, while the bard chaunted to a low, wild, monotonous air, varied only by the efforts of the singer to give interest and emphasis to particular passages, the following imitation of a Northern war-song. The Song of Harold Harfager. The sun is rising dimly red, The wind is wailing low and dread; Leaves the wolf his darksome vallies; Peep the wild dogs from the cover, Many a crest on air is streaming, Horses neigh and armour clanks; Louder still the bard is singing, |