rn disappeared the very day that Supervisor
Kennedy cam by his end. If ye kenn'd this country lang syne, your honour
wad maybe ken Frank Kennedy the Supervisor. He was a heartsome pleasant
man, and company for the best gentlemen in the county, and muckle mirth
he's made in this house. I was young then, sir, and newly married to
Bailie Mac-Candlish, that's dead and gone (a sigh); and muckle fun I've
had wi' the Supervisor. He was a daft dog. O, an he could hae hauden aff
the smugglers a bit! but he was aye venturesome. And so ye see, sir,
there was a king's sloop down in Wigton Bay, and Frank Kennedy, he
behoved to have her up to chase Dirk Hatteraick's lugger--ye'll mind Dirk
Hatteraick, Deacon? I daresay ye may have dealt wi' him--(the Deacon gave
a sort of acquiescent nod and humph). He was a daring chield, and he
fought his ship till she blew up like peelings of ingans; and Frank
Kennedy, he had been the first man to board, and he was flung like a
quarter of a mile off, and fell into the water below the rock at Warroch
Point, that they ca' the Gauger's Loup to this day.'

'And Mr. Bertram's child,' said the stranger, 'what is all this to him?'

'Ou, sir, the bairn aye held an unco wark wi' the Supervisor; and it was
generally thought he went on board the vessel alang wi' him, as bairns
are aye forward to be in mischief.'

'No, no,' said the Deacon, 'ye're clean out there, Luckie; for the young
Laird was stown away by a randy gipsy woman they ca'd Meg Merrilies--I
mind her looks weel--in revenge for Ellangowan having gar'd her be
drumm'd through Kippletringan for stealing a silver spoon.'

'If ye'll forgieme, Deacon,' said the precentor, 'ye're e'en as far wrang
as the gudewife.'

'And what is your edition of the story, sir?' said the stranger, turning
to him with interest.

'That's maybe no sae canny to tell,' said the precentor, with solemnity.

Upon being urged, however, to speak out, he preluded with two or three
large puffs of tobacco-smoke, and out of the cloudy sanctuary which these
whiffs formed around him delivered the following legend, having cleared
his voice with one or two hems, and imitating, as near as he could, the
eloquence which weekly thundered over his head from the pulpit.

'What we are now to deliver, my brethren,--hem--hem,--I mean, my good
friends,--was not done in a corner, and may serve as an answer to
witch-advocates, atheists, and misbelievers of all kinds. Ye must know
that the wor