offence, Mr Yellowley-that is, I would like them well enough if they would stay quiet in their own land, and leave us at peace with our own people, and manners, and fashions; and if they would but abide there till I went to harry them like a mad old Berserkar, I would leave them in peace till the day of judgment. With what the sea sends us, and the land lends us, as the proverb says, and a set of honest neighbourly folks to help us to consume it, so help me Saint Magnus, as I think we are even but too happy!"

"I know what war is," said an old man, "and I would as soon sail through Sumburgh-roost in a cockle-shell, or in a worse loom, as I would venture there again."

"And, pray, what wars knew your valour ?" said Halcro, who, though forbearing to contradict his landlord from a sense of respect, was not a whit inclined to abandon his argument.

"I was pressed," answered the old Triton, “to serve under Montrose, when he came here about the sixteen hundred and fifty-one, and carried a sort of us off, will ye nill ye, to get our throats cut in the wilds of Strathnavern-I shall never for

get it we had been hard put to it for victualswhat would I have given for a luncheon of Burgh Westra beef-ay, or a mess of sour sillocks ?— When our Highlandmen brought in a dainty drove of kyloes, much ceremony there was not, for we shot and felled, and flayed and roasted, and broiled, as it came to every man's hand; till when, just when our beards were at the greasiest, we heard-God preserve us-a tramp of horse, then twa or three drapping shots,-then came a full salvo,—and then, when the officers crying on us to stand, and maist of us were looking which way we might run away, down they broke, horse and foot, with old John Urry, or Hurry, or whatever they called him-he hurried us that day, and worried us to boot-and we began to fall as thick as the stots that we were felling five minutes before."

"And Montrose," said the soft voice of the graceful Minna; "what came of Montrose, or how looked he ?"

"Like a lion with the hunters before him," answered the old gentleman; " but I looked not

twice his way, for my own lay right over the

hill."

“And so you

left him ?" said Minna, in a tone

of the deepest contempt.

"It was no fault of mine, Mistress Minna," answered the old man, somewhat out of countenance; "but I was there with no choice of my own; and, besides, what good could I have done? -all the rest were running like sheep, and why should I have staid ?"

"You might have died with him," said Minna. "And lived with him to all eternity, in immortal verse !" added Claud Halcro.

"I thank you, Mistress Minna," replied the plain-dealing Zetlander; " and I thank you, my old friend Claud;-but I would rather drink ́. both your healths, in this good bicker of ale, like a living man as I am, than that you should be making songs in mine honour, for having died forty or fifty years agone. But what signified it,―run or fight, 'twas all one ;—they took Montrose, poor fellow, for all his doughty deeds, and they took me that did no doughty deeds

at all; and they hanged him, poor man, and as

"I trust in Heaven they flogged and pickled you," said Cleveland, worn out of patience with the dull narrative of the peaceful Zetlander's poltroonery, of which he seemed so wondrous little ashamed.

66

Flog horses, and pickle beef," said Magnus. "Why, you have not the vanity to think, that, with all your quarter-deck airs, you will make poor old neighbour Haagen ashamed that he was not killed some scores of years since? You have looked on death yourself, my doughty young friend, but it was with the eyes of a young man who wishes to be thought of; but we are a peaceful people,-peaceful, that is, as long as any one should be peaceful, and that is till some one has the impudence to wrong us, or our neighbours; and then, perhaps, they may not find our northern blood much cooler in our veins than was that of the old Scandinavians that gave us our names and lineage.-Get ye along, get ye along to the sword-dance, that the strangers that are

amongst us may see that our hands and our weapons are not altogether strangers."

A dozen cutlasses, selected hastily from an old arm-chest, and whose rusted hue bespoke how seldom they left the sheath, armed the same number of young Zetlanders, with whom mingled six maidens, led by Minna Troil; and the minstrelsy instantly commenced a tune appropriate to the ancient Norwegian war-dance, the evolutions of which are perhaps still practised in these remote islands.

The first movement was graceful and majestic, the youths holding their swords erect, and without much gesture; but the tune, and the corresponding motions of the dancers, became gradually more and more rapid,-they clashed their swords together, in measured time, with a spirit which gave the exercise a dangerous appearance in the eye of the spectator, though the firmness, justice, and accuracy, with which the dancers kept time with the stroke of their weapons, did, in truth, ensure its safety. The most singular part of the exhibition was the courage exhibited by the female performers, who now, surrounded by the swords