was called in the kitchen, and the gudewife in the parlour) had already signed the fate of a couple of fowls, which, for want of time to dress them otherwise, soon appeared recking from the gridiron, or brander, as Mrs Dinmont denominated it. A huge piece of cold beef-ham, eggs, butter, cakes, and barley meal bannocks in plenty, made up the entertainment, which was to be diluted with homebrewed ale of excellent quality, and a case-bottle of brandy. Few soldiers would find fault with such cheer after a day's hard exercise, and a skirmish to boot; accordingly Brown did great honour to the eatables. While the goodwife partly aided, partly instructed, a great stout servant girl, with cheeks as red as her top-knot, to remove the supper matters, and supply sugar and hot water, (which, in the dam. sel's anxiety to gaze upon an actual live captain, she was in some danger of forgetting,) Brown took an opportunity to ask his host, whether he did not repent of having neglected the gypsey's hint.

"Wha kens?" answered he; "they're queer devils ;-maybe I might just have 'scaped ae gang to meet the other. And yet I'll no say that neither; for if that randy wife was coming to Charlies-hope, she should have a pint bottle o' brandy and a pound o' tobacco to wear her through the winter. They're queer devils, as my auld father used to say-they're warst where they're warst guided-there's baith gude and ill about the gypsies."

This, and some other desultory conversation, served as a "shoeing-horn" to draw on another cup of ale and another cheerer, as Dinmont termed it in his country phrase, of brandy and water. Brown then resolutely declined all farther conviviality for that evening, pleading his own uneasiness and the effects of the skirmish, being well aware that it would have availed nothing to have remonstrated with his host on the danger that ex cess might have occasioned to his own raw wound and bloody coxcomb. A very

small bed-room, but a very clean bed, received the traveller, and the sheets made good the courteous vaunt of the hostess," that they would be as pleasant as he could find ony gate, for they were washed wi' the fairy-well water, and bleached on the bonnie white gowans, and beetled by Nelly and hersell, and what could woman, if she was a queen, do mair for them ?"

They indeed rivalled snow in whiteness, and had, besides, a pleasant fragrance from the manner in which they had been bleached. Little Wasp, after licking his master's hand to ask leave, couched himself on the coverlet at his feet; and the traveller's senses were soon lost in grateful oblivion.

CHAPTER IV.

Give ye, Britons, then

Your sportive fury, pitiless, to pour
Loose on the nightly robber of the fold.

Him, from his craggy winding haunts unearthed,
Let all the thunder of the chace pursue.

THOMSON'S Seasons.

BROWN rose early in the morning, and walked out to look at the establishment of his new friend. All was rough and neglected in the neighbourhood of the house; a paltry garden, no pains taken to make the vicinity dry or comfortable, and a total absence of all those little neatnesses which give the eye so much pleasure in looking at an English farm-house. There were, notwithstanding, evident signs that this arose only from want of taste or ignorance, not from poverty, or the negligence

which attends it. On the contrary, a noble cow-house, well filled with good milk cows, a feeding-house, with ten bullocks of the most approved breed, a stable with two good teams of horses, the appearance of domestics active, industrious, and apparently contented with their lot; in a word, an air of liberal though sluttish plenty indicated the wealthy farmer. The situation of the house above the river formed a gentle declivity, which relieved the inhabitants of the nuisances which might otherwise have stagnated around them. At a little distance was the whole band of children, playing and building houses with peats round a huge doddered oak tree, which was called Charlie'sBush, from some tradition respecting an old freebooter who had once inhabited the spot. Between the farm-house and the hill pasture was a deep morass, termed in that country a slack; it had once been the defence of a fortalice, of which no vestiges now remained, but which was