hat pleases the eye. Their ear must be pleased too, man:
they must know that he whom they favour is bold and buxom, and might
have the love of twenty, though he is suing for theirs. Believe an
old man, woman walk more by what others think than by what they think
themselves, and when she asks for the boldest man in Perth whom can
she hear named but Harry Burn-the-wind? The best armourer that ever
fashioned weapon on anvil? Why, Harry Smith again. The tightest dancer
at the maypole? Why, the lusty smith. The gayest troller of ballads?
Why, who but Harry Gow? The best wrestler, sword and buckler player, the
king of the weapon shawing, the breaker of mad horses, the tamer of
wild Highlandmen? Evermore it is thee--thee--no one but thee. And shall
Catharine prefer yonder slip of a Highland boy to thee? Pshaw! she
might as well make a steel gauntlet out of kid's leather. I tell thee,
Conachar is nothing to her, but so far as she would fain prevent the
devil having his due of him, as of other Highlandmen. God bless her,
poor thing, she would bring all mankind to better thoughts if she
could."

"In which she will fail to a certainty," said the smith, who, as the
reader may have noticed, had no goodwill to the Highland race. "I will
wager on Old Nick, of whom I should know something, he being indeed
a worker in the same element with myself, against Catharine on that
debate: the devil will have the tartan, that is sure enough."

"Ay, but Catharine," replied the glover, "hath a second thou knowest
little of: Father Clement has taken the young reiver in hand, and he
fears a hundred devils as little as I do a flock of geese."

"Father Clement!" said the smith. "You are always making some new saint
in this godly city of St. Johnston. Pray, who, for a devil's drubber,
may he be? One of your hermits that is trained for the work like
a wrestler for the ring, and brings himself to trim by fasting and
penance, is he not?"

"No, that is the marvel of it," said Simon: "Father Clement eats,
drinks, and lives much like other folks--all the rules of the church,
nevertheless, strictly observed."

"Oh, I comprehend!--a buxom priest that thinks more of good living than
of good life, tipples a can on Fastern's Eve, to enable him to face
Lent, has a pleasant in principio, and confesses all the prettiest women
about the town?"

"You are on the bow hand still, smith. I tell you, my daughter and I
could nose out either a fasting hypocrite or a f