leman likes he may play his ain spring
first; it's a' ane to Dandie.'

'Now, you looby,' said the lawyer, 'cannot you conceive that
your business can be nothing to Colonel Mannering, but that he
may not choose to have these great ears of thine regaled with
his matters?'

'Aweel, sir, just as you and he like, so ye see to my
business,' said Dandie, not a whit disconcerted by the
roughness of this reception. 'We're at the auld wark o' the
marches again, Jock o' Dawston Cleugh and me. Ye see we march
on the tap o' Touthoprigg after we pass the Pomoragrains; for
the Pomoragrains, and Slackenspool, and Bloodylaws, they come
in there, and they belang to the Peel; but after ye pass
Pomoragrains at a muckle great saucer-headed cutlugged stane,
that they ca' Charlie's Chuckie, there Dawston Cleugh and
Charlies-hope they march. Now, I say, the march rins on the
tap o' the hill where the wind and water shears; but Jock o'
Dawston Cleugh again, he contravenes that, and says that it
hauds down by the auld drove-road that gaes awa by the Knot o'
the Gate ower to Keeldar-ward--and that makes an unco
difference.'

'And what difference does it make, friend?' said Pleydell.
'How many sheep will it feed?'

'Ou, no mony,' said Dandie, scratching his head; 'it's lying
high and exposed--it may feed a hog, or aiblins twa in a good
year.'

'And for this grazing, which may be worth about five shillings
a-year, you are willing to throw away a hundred pound or two?'

'Na, sir, it's no for the value of the grass,' replied
Dinmont; 'it's for justice.'

Do we at home in Scotland make too much of Scott's life and associations
when we think of his poetry and his novels? Possibly few Scotsmen are
impartial here. As Dr. Johnson said, they are not a fair people, and
when they think of the Waverley Novels they perhaps do not always see
quite clearly. Edinburgh and the Eildon Hills, Aberfoyle and Stirling,
come between their minds and the printed page:--

A mist of memory broods and floats,
The Border waters flow,
The air is full of ballad notes
Borne out of long ago.

It might be prudent and more critical to take each book on its own
merits in a dry light. But it is not easy to think of a great writer
thus discreetly. Is Balzac often judged accurately and coldly, piece by
pi