be the close,
friend.'

'Ay, ay,' replied Donald, 'tat's ta close.'

Dinmont descended confidently, then turned into a dark alley, then up a
dark stair, and then into an open door. While he was whistling shrilly
for the waiter, as if he had been one of his collie dogs, Mannering
looked round him, and could hardly conceive how a gentleman of a liberal
profession and good society should choose such a scene for social
indulgence. Besides the miserable entrance, the house itself seemed
paltry and half ruinous. The passage in which they stood had a window to
the close, which admitted a little light during the daytime, and a
villainous compound of smells at all times, but more especially towards
evening. Corresponding to this window was a borrowed light on the other
side of the passage, looking into the kitchen, which had no direct
communication with the free air, but received in the daytime, at second
hand, such straggling and obscure light as found its way from the lane
through the window opposite. At present the interior of the kitchen was
visible by its own huge fires--a sort of Pandemonium, where men and
women, half undressed, were busied in baking, broiling, roasting oysters,
and preparing devils on the gridiron; the mistress of the place, with her
shoes slipshod, and her hair straggling like that of Megaera from under a
round-eared cap, toiling, scolding, receiving orders, giving them, and
obeying them all at once, seemed the presiding enchantress of that gloomy
and fiery region.

Loud and repeated bursts of laughter from different quarters of the house
proved that her labours were acceptable, and not unrewarded by a generous
public. With some difficulty a waiter was prevailed upon to show Colonel
Mannering and Dinmont the room where their friend learned in the law held
his hebdomadal carousals. The scene which it exhibited, and particularly
the attitude of the counsellor himself, the principal figure therein,
struck his two clients with amazement.

Mr. Pleydell was a lively, sharp-looking gentleman, with a professional
shrewdness in his eye, and, generally speaking, a professional formality
in his manners. But this, like his three-tailed wig and black coat, he
could slip off on a Saturday evening, when surrounded by a party of jolly
companions, and disposed for what he called his altitudes. On the present
occasion the revel had lasted since four o'clock, and at length, under
the direction of a venerabl