native of Carrickfergus, had come to Edinburgh to push his fortune, with one coat, one shirt, one fiddle, and no pair of breeches, and had been employed as a performer by a dancing-master. Being himself a muscular active fellow and a capital hand at an Irish jigg, in summer, when his master's business was slack, he resolved to try his hand, or rather his legs, in delivering instructions himself through country villages. In the course of his itinerancy, he had arrived at Etterick, and had the honour to give lessons to Miss, in order, as the laird phrased it, to keep her in exercise. The following winter he had been induced by a female acquaintance to visit the Methodist chapel, where, as this friend instructed him, he would hear the choicest doctrines for poor frail sinners. O'Rourke soon became a convert to tenets which he found very accommodating, and readily en-
