Gilbert
Glossin as the purchaser of the said lands and estate.' The honest writer
refused to partake of a splendid entertainment with which Gilbert
Glossin, Esquire, now of Ellangowan, treated the rest of the company, and
returned home in huge bitterness of spirit, which he vented in complaints
against the fickleness and caprice of these Indian nabobs, who never knew
what they would be at for ten days together. Fortune generously
determined to take the blame upon herself, and cut off even this vent of
Mac-Morlan's resentment.

An express arrived about six o'clock at night, 'very particularly drunk,'
the maid-servant said, with a packet from Colonel Mannering, dated four
days back, at a town about a hundred miles' distance from Kippletringan,
containing full powers to Mr. Mac-Morlan, or any one whom he might
employ, to make the intended purchase, and stating that some family
business of consequence called the Colonel himself to Westmoreland, where
a letter would find him, addressed to the care of Arthur Mervyn, Esq., of
Mervyn Hall.

Mac-Morlan, in the transports of his wrath, flung the power of attorney
at the head of the innocent maidservant, and was only forcibly withheld
from horse-whipping the rascally messenger by whose sloth and drunkenness
the disappointment had taken place.

CHAPTER XV
My gold is gone, my money is spent,
My land now take it unto thee.
Give me thy gold, good John o' the Scales,
And thine for aye my land shall be.

Then John he did him to record draw.
And John he caste him a gods-pennie;
But for every pounde that John agreed,
The land, I wis, was well worth three.

HEIR OF LINNE.

The Galwegian John o' the Scales was a more clever fellow than his
prototype. He contrived to make himself heir of Linne without the
disagreeable ceremony of 'telling down the good red gold.' Miss Bertram
no sooner heard this painful, and of late unexpected, intelligence than
she proceeded in the preparations she had already made for leaving the
mansion-house immediately. Mr. Mac-Morlan assisted her in these
arrangements, and pressed upon her so kindly the hospitality and
protection of his roof, until she should receive an answer from her
cousin, or be enabled to adopt some settled plan of life, that she felt
there would be unkindness in refusing an invitation urged with such
earnestness. Mrs. Mac-Morlan was a ladylike person, and well qualified by