e compotator, who had shared the sports and
festivity of three generations, the frolicsome company had begun to
practise the ancient and now forgotten pastime of HIGH JINKS. This game
was played in several different ways. Most frequently the dice were
thrown by the company, and those upon whom the lot fell were obliged to
assume and maintain for a time a certain fictitious character, or to
repeat a certain number of fescennine verses in a particular order. If
they departed from the characters assigned, or if their memory proved
treacherous in the repetition, they incurred forfeits, which were either
compounded for by swallowing an additional bumper or by paying a small
sum towards the reckoning. At this sport the jovial company were closely
engaged when Mannering entered the room.

Mr. Counsellor Pleydell, such as we have described him, was enthroned as
a monarch in an elbow-chair placed on the dining-table, his scratch wig
on one side, his head crowned with a bottle-slider, his eye leering with
an expression betwixt fun and the effects of wine, while his court around
him resounded with such crambo scraps of verse as these:--

Where is Gerunto now? and what's become of him? Gerunto's drowned because
he could not swim, etc., etc.

Such, O Themis, were anciently the sports of thy Scottish children!
Dinmont was first in the room. He stood aghast a moment, and then
exclaimed, 'It's him, sure enough. Deil o' the like o' that ever I saw!'

At the sound of 'Mr. Dinmont and Colonel Mannering wanting to speak to
you, sir,' Pleydell turned his head, and blushed a little when he saw the
very genteel figure of the English stranger. He was, however, of the
opinion of Falstaff, 'Out, ye villains, play out the play!' wisely
judging it the better way to appear totally unconcerned. 'Where be our
guards?' exclaimed this second Justinian; 'see ye not a stranger knight
from foreign parts arrived at this our court of Holyrood, with our bold
yeoman Andrew Dinmont, who has succeeded to the keeping of our royal
flocks within the forest of Jedwood, where, thanks to our royal care in
the administration of justice, they feed as safe as if they were within
the bounds of Fife? Where be our heralds, our pursuivants, our Lyon, our
Marchmount, our Carrick, and our Snowdown? Let the strangers be placed at
our board, and regaled as beseemeth their quality and this our high
holiday; to-morrow we will hear their tidings.'

'So please you, my liege, to