d
were offered round to the guests. Elspeth, as these refreshments were
presented, surprised and startled the whole company by motioning to the
person who bore them to stop; then, taking a glass in her hand, she rose
up, and, as the smile of dotage played upon her shrivelled features, she
pronounced, with a hollow and tremulous voice, "Wishing a' your healths,
sirs, and often may we hae such merry meetings!"

All shrunk from the ominous pledge, and set down the untasted liquor
with a degree of shuddering horror, which will not surprise those who
know how many superstitions are still common on such occasions among the
Scottish vulgar. But as the old woman tasted the liquor, she suddenly
exclaimed with a sort of shriek, "What's this?--this is wine--how should
there be wine in my son's house?--Ay," she continued with a suppressed
groan, "I mind the sorrowful cause now," and, dropping the glass from
her hand, she stood a moment gazing fixedly on the bed in which the
coffin of her grandson was deposited, and then sinking gradually into
her seat, she covered her eyes and forehead with her withered and pallid
hand.

At this moment the clergyman entered the cottage. Mr. Blattergowl,
though a dreadful proser, particularly on the subject of augmentations,
localities, teinds, and overtures in that session of the General
Assembly, to which, unfortunately for his auditors, he chanced one year
to act as moderator, was nevertheless a good man, in the old Scottish
presbyterian phrase, God-ward and man-ward. No divine was more attentive
in visiting the sick and afflicted, in catechising the youth, in
instructing the ignorant, and in reproving the erring. And hence,
notwithstanding impatience of his prolixity and prejudices, personal or
professional, and notwithstanding, moreover, a certain habitual contempt
for his understanding, especially on affairs of genius and taste,
on which Blattergowl was apt to be diffuse, from his hope of one
day fighting his way to a chair of rhetoric or belles lettres,--
notwithstanding, I say, all the prejudices excited against him by these
circumstances, our friend the Antiquary looked with great regard and
respect on the said Blattergowl, though I own he could seldom, even by
his sense of decency and the remonstrances of his womankind, be hounded
out, as he called it, to hear him preach. But he regularly took shame to
himself for his absence when Blattergowl came to Monkbarns to dinner,
to which he was