finer, dentier wild ducks never wat a feather."

"Be it sae, neighbour," rejoined the minister; "but see what
superfluities are yet revolving before your fire. I have seen the day
when ten of the bannocks which stand upon that board would have been an
acceptable dainty to as many men, that were starving on hills and bogs,
and in caves of the earth, for the Gospel's sake."

"And that's what vexes me maist of a'," said the cooper, anxious to get
some one to sympathise with his not altogether causeless anger; "an the
quean had gien it to ony suffering sant, or to ony body ava but that
reaving, lying, oppressing Tory villain, that rade in the wicked troop
of militia when it was commanded out against the sants at Bothwell Brig
by the auld tyrant Allan Ravenswood, that is gane to his place, I wad
the less hae minded it. But to gie the principal parts o' the feast to
the like o' him----!"

"Aweel, Gilbert," said the minister, "and dinna ye see a high judgment
in this? The seed of the righteous are not seen begging their bread:
think of the son of a powerful oppressor being brought to the pass of
supporting his household from your fulness."

"And, besides," said the wife, "it wasna for Lord Ravenswood neither,
an he wad hear but a body speak: it was to help to entertain the Lord
Keeper, as they ca' him, that's up yonder at Wolf's Crag."

"Sir William Ashton at Wolf's Crag!" ejaculated the astonished man of
hoops and staves.

"And hand and glove wi' Lord Ravenswood," added Dame Lightbody.

"Doited idiot! that auld, clavering sneckdrawer wad gar ye trow the moon
is made of green cheese. The Lord Keeper and Ravenswood! they are cat
and dog, hare and hound."

"I tell ye they are man and wife, and gree better than some others that
are sae," retorted the mother-in-law; "forbye, Peter Puncheon, that's
cooper the Queen's stores, is dead, and the place is to fill, and----"

"Od guide us, wull ye haud your skirling tongues!" said Girder,--for
we are to remark, that this explanation was given like a catch for two
voices, the younger dame, much encouraged by the turn of the debate,
taking up and repeating in a higher tone the words as fast as they were
uttered by her mother.

"The gudewife says naething but what's true, maister," said Girder's
foreman, who had come in during the fray. "I saw the Lord Keeper's
servants drinking and driving ower at Luckie Sma'trash's, ower-bye
yonder."

"And is their maister up at Wolf's Crag?"