tockings, clouted shoes, and small copper buckles.

Such is a brief outline of the lives and fortunes of those two persons in
whose society Mannering now found himself comfortably seated.

CHAPTER III
Do not the hist'ries of all ages
Relate miraculous presages
Of strange turns in the world's affairs,
Foreseen by astrologers, soothsayers,
Chaldeans, learned genethliacs,
And some that have writ almanacks?

Hudibras.

The circumstances of the landlady were pleaded to Mannering, first, as an
apology for her not appearing to welcome her guest, and for those
deficiencies in his entertainment which her attention might have
supplied, and then as an excuse for pressing an extra bottle of good
wine. 'I cannot weel sleep,' said the Laird, with the anxious feelings of
a father in such a predicament, 'till I hear she's gotten ower with it;
and if you, sir, are not very sleepery, and would do me and the Dominie
the honour to sit up wi' us, I am sure we shall not detain you very late.
Luckie Howatson is very expeditious. There was ance a lass that was in
that way; she did not live far from hereabouts--ye needna shake your head
and groan, Dominie; I am sure the kirk dues were a' weel paid, and what
can man do mair?--it was laid till her ere she had a sark ower her head;
and the man that she since wadded does not think her a pin the waur for
the misfortune. They live, Mr. Mannering, by the shoreside at Annan, and
a mair decent, orderly couple, with six as fine bairns as ye would wish
to see plash in a saltwater dub; and little curlie Godfrey--that's the
eldest, the come o' will, as I may say--he's on board an excise yacht. I
hae a cousin at the board of excise; that's Commissioner Bertram; he got
his commissionership in the great contest for the county, that ye must
have heard of, for it was appealed to the House of Commons. Now I should
have voted there for the Laird of Balruddery; but ye see my father was a
Jacobite, and out with Kenmore, so he never took the oaths; and I ken not
weel how it was, but all that I could do and say, they keepit me off the
roll, though my agent, that had a vote upon my estate, ranked as a good
vote for auld Sir Thomas Kittlecourt. But, to return to what I was
saying, Luckie Howatson is very expeditious, for this lass--'

Here the desultory and long-winded narrative of the Laird was interrupted
by the voice of some one ascending the stairs from the