This man had been seen by these poor people to walk in the direction of the sea.

They traced the same dark man to Irvine, and found he had embarked on board a vessel which was just getting under sail for Ireland. The officers immediately hired a small brig, and sailed also. A violent gale arose, and drove them for shelter to the Isle of Arran. They landed, the second night after they had left Irvine, on that bare and desolate shorethey landed, and behold, the ship they were in pursuit of at the quay!

The Captain acknowledged at once that a man corresponding. to their description had been one of his passengers from Irvine-he had gone ashore but an hour ago.

They searched-they found M'Ewan striding by himself close to the sea-beach, amidst the dashing spray-his Bible in his hand. The instant he saw them he said-" You need not tell me your errand—I am he you seekI am John M'Ewan, that murdered Andrew Bell. I surrender myself your prisoner.God told me but this moment that ye would come and find me; for I opened his word, and the first text that my eye fell upon was this." He seized the officer by the hand, and laid his finger upon the page-"See you there?" said he; "Do you see the Lord's own blessed decree, Whoso sheddeth man's blood, by man shall his blood be shed,-And there," he added, plucking a pocket book from his bosom

"there friends, is Andrew Bell's siller-ye'll find the haill o't there, an be not three halfcrowns and a sixpence. Seven-and-thirty pounds was the sum for which I yielded up my soul to the temptation of the Prince of the Power of the Air-Seven-and-thirty pounds! Ah! my brethren! call me not an olive, until you see me gathered. I thought that I stood fast, and behold ye all how I am fallen!"

I saw this singular fanatic tried. He would have pleaded guilty; but, for excellent reasons, the Crown Advocate wished the whole evidence to be led. John had dressed himself with scrupulous accuracy in the very clothes he wore when he did the deed. The blood of the murdered man was still visible upon the sleeve of his blue coat. When any circumstance of peculiar atrocity was mentioned by a witness, he signified, by a solemn shake of his head, his sense of its darkness and its conclusiveness; and when the Judge, in addressing him, enlarged upon the horror of his guilt, he, standing right before the bench, kept his eye fixed with calm earnestness on his Lordship's face, assenting now and then to the propriety of what he said, by exactly that sort of see-saw gesture which you may have seen escape now and then from the devout listener to a pathetic sermon or sacramental service. John, in a short speech of his own, expressed his sense of his guilt; but even then he borrowed the language of Scripture, styling himself "a sinner, and the chief of sinners."

Never was such a specimen of that insane pride. The very agony of this man's humiliation had a spice of holy exultation in it; there was in the most penitent of his lugubrious glances still something that said or seemed to say-" Abuse me-spurn me as you will-I loathe myself also; but this deed is Satan's." Indeed, he always continued to speak quite gravely of his "trespass," his "backsliding," his "sore temptation!"

I was present also with him during the final scene. His irons had been knocked off ere I entered the cell; and clothed as he was in a most respectable suit of black, and with that fixed and imperturbable solemnity of air and aspect, upon my conscience, I think it would have been a difficult matter for any stranger to pick out the murderer among the group of clergymen that surrounded him. In vain did these good men labour to knock away the impious and absurd props upon which the happy fanatic leaned himself. He heard what they said, and instantly said something still stronger himself-but only to shrink back again to his own fastness with redoubled confidence" He had once been right, and he could not be wrong; he had been permitted to make a sore stumble!"-This was his utmost concession.

What a noble set of nerves had been thrown away here!-He was led out of the dark, damp cellar, in which he had been chained for weeks, and brought at once into the open air.

His first step into light was upon his scaffold! and what a moment! In general, at least in Scotland, the crowd, assembled upon such occasions, receive the victim of the law with all the solemnity of profoundest silence; -not unfrequently there is even something of the respectful, blended with compassion, on that myriad of faces. But here, the moment M'Ewan appeared, he was saluted with one universal shout of horror-a huzza of mingled joy and triumph, and execration and laughter; -cats, rats, every filth of the pillory, showered about the gibbet. I was close by his elbow at that terrific moment, and I laid my finger on his wrist. As I live, there was never a calmer pulse in this world-slow, full, strong; -I feel the iron beat of it at this moment.

There happened to be a slight drizzle of rain at the moment; observing which, he turned round and said to the Magistrates,— "Dinna come out,-dinna come out, your honours, to weet yourselves. It's beginning to rain, and the lads are uncivil at ony rate, poor thoughtless creatures!”

He took his leave of this angry mob in a speech which would not have disgraced a martyr, embracing the stake of glory,-and the noose was, tied. I observed the brazen firmness of his limbs after his face was covered. He flung the handkerchief with an air of semibenediction, and died without one apparent struggle.

THE TOWN DRUMMER.

FOR many a year, one Robin Boss had been town drummer; he was the relic of some American-war fencibles, and was, to say the God's truth of him, a divor bodie, with no manner of conduct, saving a very earnest endeavour to fill himself fou as often as he could get the means; the consequence of which was, that his face was as plooky as a curran bun, and his nose as red as a partan's tae.

One afternoon there was a need to send out a proclamation to abolish a practice that was growing a custom, in some of the bye parts of the town, of keeping swine at large-ordering them to be confined in proper styes, and other suitable places.-As on all occasions when the matter to be proclaimed was from the magistrates, Robin, on this, was attended by the town officers in their Sunday garbs, and with their halberts in their hand; but the abominable and irreverent creature was so drunk, that he wambled to and fro over the drum, as if there had not been a bane in his body. He was seemingly as soople and as senseless as a bolster. Still, as this was no new thing with him, it might have passed; for James Hound, the senior officer, was in the practice, when Robin was in that state, of reading the proclamation himself. On this