mer
session was ower."

"Ye donnard auld deevil," answered his guest, his Scottish accent
predominating when in anger though otherwise not particularly
remarkable,--"ye donnard auld crippled idiot, what have I to do with the
session, or the geese that flock to it, or the hawks that pick their
pinions for them?"

"Troth, and that's true," said mine host, who, in fact, only spoke upon
a very general recollection of the stranger's original education, yet
would have been sorry not to have been supposed accurate as to the
station and profession of him, or any other occasional guest--"That's
very true,--but I thought ye had some law affair of your ain to look
after--I have ane mysell--a ganging plea that my father left me, and his
father afore left to him. It's about our back-yard--ye'll maybe hae heard
of it in the Parliament-house, Hutchison against Mackitchinson--it's a
weel-kenn'd plea--its been four times in afore the fifteen, and deil ony
thing the wisest o' them could make o't, but just to send it out again
to the outer-house.--O it's a beautiful thing to see how lang and how
carefully justice is considered in this country!"

"Hold your tongue, you fool," said the traveller, but in great
good-humour, "and tell us what you can give this young gentleman and me
for dinner."

"Ou, there's fish, nae doubt,--that's sea-trout and caller haddocks,"
said Mackitchinson, twisting his napkin; "and ye'll be for a
mutton-chop, and there's cranberry tarts, very weel preserved, and--and
there's just ony thing else ye like."

"Which is to say, there is nothing else whatever? Well, well, the fish
and the chop, and the tarts, will do very well. But don't imitate the
cautious delay that you praise in the courts of justice. Let there be no
remits from the inner to the outer house, hear ye me?"

"Na, na," said Mackitchinson, whose long and heedful perusal of
volumes of printed session papers had made him acquainted with some law
phrases--"the denner shall be served quam primum and that peremptorie."
And with the flattering laugh of a promising host, he left them in his
sanded parlour, hung with prints of the Four Seasons.

As, notwithstanding his pledge to the contrary, the glorious delays of
the law were not without their parallel in the kitchen of the inn, our
younger traveller had an opportunity to step out and make some inquiry
of the people of the house concerning the rank and station of his
companion. The information which he