If once gold was like slate stones,
there is a wearyful change now-a-days, I must confess; for, so to speak,
gold guineas seem to have taken flight from the land along with the
witches and warlocks, and posterity are left as toom in the pockets as
rookit gamblers.

But if the mammon of precious metals be now totally altogether out of the
world, weel-a-wat we had a curiosity still, and that was a cleipy woman
with a long stick, that rhaemed away, and better rhaemed away, about the
Prentice's Pillar, who got a knock on the pow from his jealous blackguard
of a master--and about the dogs and the deer--and Sir Thomas this-thing
and my Lord tother-thing, who lay buried beneath the broad flag-stones in
their rusty coats of armour--and such a heap of havers, that no throat
was wide enough to swallow them for gospel, although gey an' entertaining
I allow. However, it was a real farce; that is certain.

Oh, but the building was a grand and overpowering sight, making man to
dree the sense of his own insignificance, even in the midst of his own
handiwork! First, we looked over our shoulders to the grand carved
roofs, where the swallows swee-swee'd, as they darted through the open
windows, and the yattering sparrows fed their gorbals in the far boles;
and syne we looked shuddering down into the dark vaults, where nobody in
their senses could have ventured, though Peter Farrel, being a rash
courageous body, was keen on it, having heard less than I could tell him
of such places being haunted by the spirits of those who have died or
been murdered within them in the bloody days of the old times; or of
their being so full of foul air, as to extinguish man's breath in his
nostrils like the snuff of a candle. Though no man should throw his life
into jeopardy, yet I commend all for taking timeous recreation--the King
himself on the throne not being able to live without the comforts of
life; and even the fifteen Lords of Session, with as much powder on their
wigs as would keep a small family in loaves for a week, requiring air and
exercise, after sentencing vagabonds to be first hanged, and then their
clothes given to Jock Heich, and their bodies to Doctor Monro.

Before going out to inspect the wonderfuls, we had taken the natural
precaution to tell the goodman of the inn, that we would be back to take
a chack of something from him, at such and such an hour; and, having had
our bellyful of the Chapel,--and the Prentice's Pillar,--and