h, or let her fail for fau't o'
fude, or hang her up for an auld whig wife; for the provost, they say, is
very regardfu' o' sic puir bodies. And then you and me wad gang and pouss
our fortunes, like the folk i' the daft auld tales about Jock the
Giant-killer and Valentine and Orson; and we wad come back to merry
Scotland, as the sang says, and I wad tak to the stilts again, and turn
sic furs on the bonny rigs o' Milnwood holms, that it wad be worth a pint
but to look at them."

"I fear," said Morton, "there is very little chance, my good friend
Cuddie, of our getting back to our old occupation."

"Hout, stir--hout, stir," replied Cuddie, "it's aye gude to keep up a
hardy heart--as broken a ship's come to land.--But what's that I hear?
never stir, if my auld mither isna at the preaching again! I ken the
sough o' her texts, that sound just like the wind blawing through the
spence; and there's Kettledrummle setting to wark, too--Lordsake, if the
sodgers anes get angry, they'll murder them baith, and us for company!"

Their farther conversation was in fact interrupted by a blatant noise
which rose behind them, in which the voice of the preacher emitted, in
unison with that of the old woman, tones like the grumble of a bassoon
combined with the screaking of a cracked fiddle. At first, the aged pair
of sufferers had been contented to condole with each other in smothered
expressions of complaint and indignation; but the sense of their injuries
became more pungently aggravated as they communicated with each other,
and they became at length unable to suppress their ire.

"Woe, woe, and a threefold woe unto you, ye bloody and violent
persecutors!" exclaimed the Reverend Gabriel Kettledrummle--"Woe, and
threefold woe unto you, even to the breaking of seals, the blowing of
trumpets, and the pouring forth of vials!"

"Ay--ay--a black cast to a' their ill-fa'ur'd faces, and the outside o'
the loof to them at the last day!" echoed the shrill counter-tenor of
Mause, falling in like the second part of a catch.

"I tell you," continued the divine, "that your rankings and your
ridings--your neighings and your prancings--your bloody, barbarous,
and inhuman cruelties--your benumbing, deadening, and debauching
the conscience of poor creatures by oaths, soul-damning and
self-contradictory, have arisen from earth to Heaven like a foul and
hideous outcry of perjury for hastening the wrath to come--hugh! hugh!
hugh!"

"And I say," cried