"And ye look dreidful bad the-day, sir, I must say that," he continued.
"There's nothing like a dram for ye--if ye'll take my advice of it; and
bein' as it's Christmas, I'm no' saying," he added, with a fatherly
smile, "but what I would join ye mysel'."

John had listened with a sick heart.

"I'll give you a dram when we've got through," said he, affecting a
sprightliness which sat on him most unhandsomely, "and not a drop till
then. Business first and pleasure afterwards."

With this promise the jarvey was prevailed upon to clamber to his place
and drive, with hideous deliberation, to the door of the Lodge. There
were no signs as yet of any public emotion; only, two men stood not far
off in talk, and their presence, seen from afar, set John's pulses
buzzing. He might have spared himself his fright, for the pair were lost
in some dispute of a theological complexion, and, with lengthened upper
lip and enumerating fingers, pursued the matter of their difference, and
paid no heed to John.

But the cabman proved a thorn in the flesh. Nothing would keep him on
his perch; he must clamber down, comment upon the pebble in the door
(which he regarded as an ingenious but unsafe device), help John with
the portmanteau, and enliven matters with a flow of speech, and
especially of questions, which I thus condense:--

"He'll no' be here himsel', will he? No? Well, he's an eccentric man--a
fair oddity--if ye ken the expression. Great trouble with his tenants,
they tell me. I've driven the faim'ly for years. I drove a cab at his
father's waddin'. What'll your name be?--I should ken your face.
Baigrey, ye say? There were Baigreys about Gilmerton; ye'll be one of
that lot? Then this'll be a friend's portmantie, like? Why? Because the
name upon it's Nucholson! O, if ye're in a hurry, that's another job.
Waverley Brig'? Are ye for away?"

So the friendly toper prated and questioned and kept John's heart in a
flutter. But to this also, as to other evils under the sun, there came a
period; and the victim of circumstances began at last to rumble towards
the railway terminus at Waverley Bridge. During the transit he sat with
raised glasses in the frosty chill and mouldy foetor of his chariot, and
glanced out sidelong on the holiday face of things, the shuttered shops,
and the crowds along the pavement, much as the rider in the Tyburn cart
may have observed the concourse gathering to his execution.

At the station his spirits rose agai