Such, indeed, was the penury of vehicular conveyance, that applications
were made in manner most humble, even to Meg Dods herself, entreating
she would permit her old whiskey to _ply_ (for such might have been the
phrase) at St. Ronan's Well, for that day only, and that upon good cause
shown. But not for sordid lucre would the undaunted spirit of Meg
compound her feud with her neighbours of the detested Well. "Her
carriage," she briefly replied, "was engaged for her ain guest and the
minister, and deil anither body's fit should gang intill't. Let every
herring hing by its ain head." And, accordingly, at the duly appointed
hour, creaked forth, the leathern convenience, in which, carefully
screened by the curtain from the gaze of the fry of the village, sat
Nabob Touchwood, in the costume of an Indian merchant, or Shroff, as
they are termed. The clergyman would not, perhaps, have been so
punctual, had not a set of notes and messages from his friend at the
Cleikum, ever following each other as thick as the papers which decorate
the tail of a schoolboy's kite, kept him so continually on the alert
from daybreak till noon, that Mr. Touchwood found him completely
dressed; and the whiskey was only delayed for about ten minutes before
the door of the manse, a space employed by Mr. Cargill in searching for
the spectacles, which at last were happily discovered upon his own nose.

At length, seated by the side of his new friend, Mr. Cargill arrived
safe at Shaws-Castle, the gate of which mansion was surrounded by a
screaming group of children, so extravagantly delighted at seeing the
strange figures to whom each successive carriage gave birth, that even
the stern brow and well-known voice of Johnie Tirlsneck, the beadle,
though stationed in the court on express purpose, was not equal to the
task of controlling them. These noisy intruders, however, who, it was
believed, were somewhat favoured by Clara Mowbray, were excluded from
the court which opened before the house, by a couple of grooms or
helpers armed with their whips, and could only salute, with their shrill
and wondering hailing, the various personages, as they passed down a
short avenue leading from the exterior gate.

The Cleikum nabob and the minister were greeted with shouts not the
least clamorous; which the former merited by the ease with which he wore
the white turban, and the latter, by the infrequency of his appearance
in public, and both, by the singular associa