“Oh, wheesht, my darlings, wheesht!” she exclaimed, and she fell upon her knees and threw her arms round the necks of all the three, “you will get bread soon; the Almighty will not permit my bairns to perish; no, no; ye shall have bread.”

In despair she hurried to the cottage of her birth.  The door was opened by one who had been a rejected suitor.  He gazed upon her intently for a few seconds; and she was still young, being scarce more than six-and-twenty, and in the midst of her wretchedness, yet lovely.

“Gude gracious, Tibby Fowler!” he exclaimed, “is that you?  Poor creature! are ye seeking charity?  Weel, I think ye’ll mind what I said to you now, that your pride would have a fa’!”

While the heartless owner of the cottage yet spoke, a voice behind her was heard exclaiming, “It is her! it is her! my ain Tibby and her bairns!”

At the well-known voice, Tibby uttered a wild scream of joy, and fell senseless on the earth; but the next moment her husband, William Gordon, raised her to his breast.  Three weeks before he had returned to Britain, and traced her from village to village, till he found her in the midst of their children, on the threshold of the place of her nativity.  His story we need not here tell.  He had fallen into the hands of the enemy; he had been retained for months on board of their vessel; and when a storm had arisen, and hope was gone, he had saved her from being lost and her crew from perishing.  In reward for his services, his own vessel had been restored to him, and he was returned to his country, after an absence of eighteen months, richer than when he left, and laden with honours.  The rest is soon told.  After Tibby and her husband had wept upon each other’s neck, and he had kissed his children, and again their mother, with his youngest child on one arm, and his wife resting on the other, he hastened from the spot that had been the scene of such bitterness and transport.  In a few years more, William Gordon having obtained a competency, they re-purchased the cottage in the glen, where Tibby Fowler lived to see her children’s children, and died at a good old age in the house in which she had been born—­the remains of which, we have only to add, for the edification of the curious, may be seen until this day.

THE CRADLE OF LOGIE.

It is not very easy, when we consider the great desire manifested by authors and editors to serve up piquant dishes of fiction on the broad table of literature, to account for the fact that the undoubtedly true story of the Cradle of Logie and the Indian Princess, as she is often called, should never have appeared in print.  It has apparently escaped the sharpest eyes of our chroniclers.  Sir Walter Scott did not appear to have much fancy for Angus; but it would seem that the facts of this strange occurrence in a civilised country, and not very far back, had never reached him.  Even the histories of Forfarshire