pend the hours in holy meditation till such
time as the inebriated trumpeter should awaken to a sense of propriety.

The laird did not awake in any reasonable time; for, he being overcome
with fatigue and wassail, his sleep became sounder, and his Morphean
measures more intense. These varied a little in their structure; but
the general run of the bars sounded something in this way:
"Hic-hoc-wheew!" It was most profoundly ludicrous; and could not have
missed exciting risibility in anyone save a pious, a disappointed, and
humbled bride.

The good dame wept bitterly. She could not for her life go and awaken
the monster, and request him to make room for her: but she retired
somewhere, for the laird, on awaking next morning, found that he was
still lying alone. His sleep had been of the deepest and most genuine
sort; and, all the time that it lasted, he had never once thought of
either wives, children, or sweethearts, save in the way of dreaming
about them; but, as his spirit began again by slow degrees to verge
towards the boundaries of reason, it became lighter and more buoyant
from the effects of deep repose, and his dreams partook of that
buoyancy, yea, to a degree hardly expressible. He dreamed of the reel,
the jig, the strathspey, and the corant; and the elasticity of his
frame was such that he was bounding over the heads of maidens, and
making his feet skimmer against the ceiling, enjoying, the while, the
most ecstatic emotions. These grew too fervent for the shackles of the
drowsy god to restrain. The nasal bugle ceased its prolonged sounds in
one moment, and a sort of hectic laugh took its place. "Keep it
going--play up, you devils!" cried the laird, without changing his
position on the pillow. But this exertion to hold the fiddlers at their
work fairly awakened the delighted dreamer, and, though he could not
refrain from continuing, his laugh, beat length, by tracing out a
regular chain of facts, came to be sensible of his real situation.
"Rabina, where are you? What's become of you, my dear?" cried the
laird. But there was no voice nor anyone that answered or regarded. He
flung open the curtains, thinking to find her still on her knees, as he
had seen her, but she was not there, either sleeping or waking.
"Rabina! Mrs. Colwan!" shouted he, as loud as he could call, and then
added in the same breath, "God save the king--I have lost my wife!"

He sprung up and opened the casement: the day-light was beginning to
s