biberon--I mean drinker of vin? It is known all over
the marches--I mean the Bordures. Aha! no one Frenchman could cheat the
famous Innerkepple; so I brought the best that was in all my celliers.
Is it not grand and magnifique?"

"Grand an' magnifique, man!" replied Innerkepple, as he sipped the wine
with the gravity of a judge. "It's mair than a' that, man, if my tongue
could coin a word to express its ain sense o' what it is at this moment
enjoying. But the organ's stupified wi' sheer delight, and forgets its
very mither's tongue; an' nae wonder, for my very een, that didna taste
it, reel and get drunk wi' the sight." And the delighted baron took
another pull of the goblet.

"Aha! Innerkepple, you are von of the grandest biberons I have ever seen
in all this contree," said the merchant. "It is one great pleasir to
trafique vit von so learned in the science of _bon gout_. That grand
smack of your lips would tempt me to ruin myself, and drink mine own
commodity."

"Hae ye a stock o' the treasure?" said the baron; "I canna suppose it."

"Just five barrils in my celliers at Berwick," answered the merchant,
"containing quatre hundred pints de Paris in each one of them."

"I could walk on my bare feet to Berwick to see it and taste it," said
the baron; "but what clatter o' a horse's feet is that in the court,
Kate?"

"Ha! sure it is my mules," said the Frenchman, starting to his feet in
alarm.

"Oh! keep your seat, Monsieur Merchant," cried Kate, laughing and
looking out of the window. "Can a lady not despatch her servitor to
Selkirk for a pair of sandals, that should this day have been on my feet
in place of in Gilbert Skinner's hands, without raising folks from their
wine?"

The Frenchman was satisfied, and retook his seat; but the baron looked
at Kate, as if at a loss to know what freak had now come into her
inventive head. The letting down of the drawbridge, and the sound of the
horse's feet passing along the sounding wood, verified her statement,
but carried no conviction to the mind of Innerkepple. He had long
ceased, however, the vain effort to understand the workings of his
daughter's mind, and on the present occasion he was occupied about too
important a subject to be interested in the vagaries of a madcap wench.

"By the Virgin!" she said again, "my jennet will lose her own sandals in
going for mine, if Gregory thus strikes the rowels into her sides."

Covering, by these words, the rapid departure of