unset."

"Nor I either, my lord," answered his host, "notwithstanding it is said
to have been the custom of the ancients. But then I dine differently
from your lordship, and therefore am better enabled to dispense with
those elaborate entertainments which my womankind (that is, my sister
and niece, my lord) are apt to place on the table, for the display
rather of their own house-wifery than the accommodation of our wants.
However, a broiled bone, or a smoked haddock, or an oyster, or a slice
of bacon of our own curing, with a toast and a tankard--or something or
other of that sort, to close the orifice of the stomach before going
to bed, does not fall under my restriction, nor, I hope, under your
lordship's."

"My no-supper is literal, Mr. Oldbuck; but I will attend you at your
meal with pleasure."

"Well, my lord," replied the Antiquary, "I will endeavour to entertain
your ears at least, since I cannot banquet your palate. What I am about
to read to your lordship relates to the upland glens."

Lord Glenallan, though he would rather have recurred to the subject of
his own uncertainties, was compelled to make a sign of rueful civility
and acquiescence.

The Antiquary, therefore, took out his portfolio of loose sheets, and
after premising that the topographical details here laid down were
designed to illustrate a slight essay upon castrametation, which had
been read with indulgence at several societies of Antiquaries, he
commenced as follows: "The subject, my lord, is the hill-fort of
Quickens-bog, with the site of which your lordship is doubtless
familiar--it is upon your store-farm of Mantanner, in the barony of
Clochnaben."

"I think I have heard the names of these places," said the Earl, in
answer to the Antiquary's appeal.

"Heard the name? and the farm brings him six hundred a-year--O Lord!"

Such was the scarce-subdued ejaculation of the Antiquary. But his
hospitality got the better of his surprise, and he proceeded to read his
essay with an audible voice, in great glee at having secured a patient,
and, as he fondly hoped, an interested hearer.

"Quickens-bog may at first seem to derive its name from the plant
Quicken, by which, Scottice, we understand couch-grass, dog-grass, or
the Triticum repens of Linnaeus, and the common English monosyllable
Bog, by which we mean, in popular language, a marsh or morass--in
Latin, Palus. But it may confound the rash adopters of the more obvious
etymological derivati