f laughter.

"But do you really believe he never saw it?" said I, rather crestfallen.

"Well," said the gentleman, "I have heard him charged with never having
seen it, and he never denied it."

Knowing that Scott really was as practical a man as Dr. Franklin, and as
little disposed to poetic extravagances, and an exceedingly sensible,
family kind of person, I thought very probably this might be true,
unless he had seen it some time in his early youth. Most likely good
Mrs. Scott never would have let him commit the impropriety that we were
about to, and run the risk of catching the rheumatism by going out to
see how an old abbey looked at twelve o'clock at night.

We waited for the moon to rise, and of course it did not rise; nothing
ever does when it is waited for. We went to one window, and went to
another; half past eleven came, and no moon. "Let us give it up," said
I, feeling rather foolish. However, we agreed to wait another quarter of
an hour, and finally Mr. ---- announced that the moon _was_ risen; the
only reason we did not see it was, because it was behind the Eildon
Hills. So we voted to consider her risen at any rate, and started out in
the dark, threading the narrow streets of the village with the
comforting reflection that we were doing what Sir Walter would think
rather a silly thing. When we got out before the abbey there was enough
light behind the Eildon Hills to throw their three shadowy cones out
distinctly to view, and to touch with a gloaming, uncertain ray the
ivy-clad walls. As we stood before the abbey, the guide fumbling with
his keys, and finally heard the old lock clash as the door slowly opened
to admit us, I felt a little shiver of the ghostly come over me, just
enough to make it agreeable.

In the daytime we had criticized Walter Scott's moonlight description in
the lines which say,--

"The distant Tweed is heard, to rave,
And the owlet to hoot o'er the dead man's grave."

"We hear nothing of the Tweed, at any rate," said we; "that must be a
poetic license." But now at midnight, as we walked silently through the
mouldering aisles, the brawl of the Tweed was so distinctly heard that
it seemed as if it was close by the old, lonely pile; nor can any term
describe the sound more exactly than the word "rave," which the poet
has chosen. It was the precise accuracy of this little item of
description which made me feel as if Scott must have been here in the
night. I walked up into the