that where his Lordship had opened a library I might find a dinner.
But failing to discern it, I addressed myself on the subject to an
elderly man in a pack-sheet apron, who stood all alone, looking out upon
the sea, like Napoleon, in the print, from a projection of the bulwark.
He turned round, and showed, by an unmistakable expression of eye and
feature, that he was what the servant girl in "Guy Mannering"
characterizes as "very particularly drunk,"--not stupidly, but happily,
funnily, conceitedly drunk, and full of all manner of high thoughts of
himself. "It'll be an awfu' coorse nicht," he said, "fra the sea." "Very
likely," I replied, reiterating my query in a form that indicated some
little confidence of receiving the needed information; "I daresay you
could point me out the public-house here?" "Aweel, I wat, that I can;
but what's that?" pointing to the straps of my knapsack;--"are ye a
sodger on the Queen's account, or ye'r ain?" "On my own, to be sure; but
have ye a public-house here?" "Ay, twa; ye'll be a traveller?" "O yes,
great traveller, and very hungry: have I passed the best public-house?"
"Ay; and ye'll hae come a gude stap the day?" A woman came up, with
spectacles on nose, and a piece of white seam-work in her hand; and,
cutting short the dialogue by addressing myself to her, she at once
directed me to the public-house. "Hoot, gude-wife," I heard the man say,
as I turned down the street, "we suld ha'e gotten mair oot o' him. He's
a great traveller yon, an' has a gude Scots tongue in his head."

Travellers, save when, during the herring season, an occasional
fish-curer comes the way, rarely bait at the Gardenstone inn; and in the
little low-browed room, with its windows in the thatch, into which, as
her best, the land-lady ushered me, I certainly found nothing to
identify the _locale_ with that chosen by the literary lawyer for his
open library. But, according to Ferguson, though "learning was scant,
provision was good;" and I dined sumptuously on an immense platter of
fried flounders. There was a little bit of cold pork added to the fare;
but, aware from previous experience of the pisciverous habits of the
swine of a fishing village, I did what I knew the defunct pig must have
very frequently done before me,--satisfied a keenly-whetted appetite on
fish exclusively. I need hardly remind the reader that Lord
Gardenstone's inn was not that of Gardenstone, but that of
Laurence-kirk,--the thriving village w