ave no objection to let me
try him?"

"None in the world, Monkbarns. I hear the sergeant below--I'll rehearse
the manual in the meanwhile. Baby, carry my gun and bayonet down to the
room below--it makes less noise there when we ground arms." And so exit
the martial magistrate, with his maid behind him bearing his weapons.

"A good squire that wench for a gouty champion," observed Oldbuck.--
"Hector, my lad, hook on, hook on--Go with him, boy--keep him employed,
man, for half-an-hour or so--butter him with some warlike terms--praise
his dress and address."

Captain M'Intyre, who, like many of his profession, looked down with
infinite scorn on those citizen soldiers who had assumed arms without
any professional title to bear them, rose with great reluctance,
observing that he should not know what to say to Mr. Littlejohn; and
that to see an old gouty shop-keeper attempting the exercise and duties
of a private soldier, was really too ridiculous.

"It may be so, Hector," said the Antiquary, who seldom agreed with any
person in the immediate proposition which was laid down--"it may possibly
be so in this and some other instances; but at present the country
resembles the suitors in a small-debt court, where parties plead in
person, for lack of cash to retain the professed heroes of the bar. I
am sure in the one case we never regret the want of the acuteness and
eloquence of the lawyers; and so, I hope, in the other, we may manage to
make shift with our hearts and muskets, though we shall lack some of the
discipline of you martinets."

"I have no objection, I am sure, sir, that the whole world should fight
if they please, if they will but allow me to be quiet," said Hector,
rising with dogged reluctance.

"Yes, you are a very quiet personage indeed," said his uncle, "whose
ardour for quarrelling cannot pass so much as a poor phoca sleeping upon
the beach!"

But Hector, who saw which way the conversation was tending, and hated
all allusions to the foil he had sustained from the fish, made his
escape before the Antiquary concluded the sentence.

CHAPTER SEVENTEENTH.

Well, well, at worst, 'tis neither theft nor coinage,
Granting I knew all that you charge me with.
What though the tomb hath borne a second birth,
And given the wealth to one that knew not on't,
Yet fair exchange was never robbery,
Far less pure bounty--