eived his dram and withdrawn, and Master
Spiggot, the gudeman or landlord of the _Thane of Fife_, the principal
tavern, and only inn or hostel in the burgh, was taking a last view of
the main street, and considering the propriety of closing for the night.
It was broad, spacious, and is still overlooked by many a tall and
gable-ended mansion, whose antique and massive aspect announces that,
like other Fifeshire burghs before the Union in the preceding year, it
had seen better days. Indeed, the house then occupied by Master Spiggot
himself, and from which his sign bearing the panoplied _Thane_ at full
gallop on a caparisoned steed swung creaking in the night wind, was one
of those ancient edifices, and in former days had belonged to the
provost of the adjoining kirk; but this was (as Spiggot said) "in the
auld warld times o' the Papistrie."

The gudeman shook his white head solemnly and sadly, as he looked down
the empty thoroughfare.

"There _was_ a time," he muttered, and paused.

Silent and desolate as any in the ruins of Thebes, the street was half
covered with weeds and rank grass that grew between the stones, and
Spiggot could see them waving in the dim starlight.

Crail is an out-of-the-way place. It is without thoroughfare and without
trade; few leave it and still fewer think of going there, for there one
feels as if on the very verge of society; for there, even by day, reigns
a monastic gloom, a desertion, a melancholy, a uniform and voiceless
silence, broken only by the croak of the gleds and the cawing of the
clamorous gulls nestling on the old church tower, while the sea booms
incessantly as it rolls on the rocky beach.

But there was a time when it was otherwise; when the hum of commerce
rose around its sculptured cross, and there was a daily bustle in the
chambers of its Town-hall, for there a portly provost and bailies with a
battalion of seventeen corpulent councillors sat solemnly deliberating
on the affairs of the burgh; and swelling with a municipal importance
that was felt throughout the whole East Neuk of Fife; for, in those
days, the bearded Russ and red-haired Dane, the Norwayer, and the
Hollander, laden with merchandise, furled their sails in that deserted
harbor, where now scarcely a fisherboat is seen; for on Crail, as on all
its sister towns along the coast, fell surely and heavily the terrible
blight of 1707, and now it is hastening rapidly to insignificance and
decay.

On the sad change