ken, then, young gentleman, since it imports you to know, that
Miss Vernon is"--

Here breaking off, he sucked in both his cheeks, till his lantern jaws
and long chin assumed the appearance of a pair of nut-crackers; winked
hard once more, frowned, shook his head, and seemed to think his
physiognomy had completed the information which his tongue had not fully
told.

"Good God!" said I--"so young, so beautiful, so early lost!"

"Troth ye may say sae--she's in a manner lost, body and saul; forby being
a Papist, I'se uphaud her for"--and his northern caution prevailed, and
he was again silent.

"For what, sir?" said I sternly. "I insist on knowing the plain meaning
of all this."

"On, just for the bitterest Jacobite in the haill shire."

"Pshaw! a Jacobite?--is that all?"

Andrew looked at me with some astonishment, at hearing his information
treated so lightly; and then muttering, "Aweel, it's the warst thing I
ken aboot the lassie, howsoe'er," he resumed his spade, like the king of
the Vandals, in Marmontel's late novel.

CHAPTER SEVENTH.

_Bardolph._--The sheriff, with a monstrous watch, is at the door.
Henry IV. _First Part._

I found out with some difficulty the apartment which was destined for my
accommodation; and having secured myself the necessary good-will and
attention from my uncle's domestics, by using the means they were most
capable of comprehending, I secluded myself there for the remainder of
the evening, conjecturing, from the fair way in which I had left my new
relatives, as well as from the distant noise which continued to echo from
the stone-hall (as their banqueting-room was called), that they were not
likely to be fitting company for a sober man.

"What could my father mean by sending me to be an inmate in this strange
family?" was my first and most natural reflection. My uncle, it was
plain, received me as one who was to make some stay with him, and his
rude hospitality rendered him as indifferent as King Hal to the number of
those who fed at his cost. But it was plain my presence or absence would
be of as little importance in his eyes as that of one of his blue-coated
serving-men. My cousins were mere cubs, in whose company I might, if I
liked it, unlearn whatever decent manners, or elegant accomplishments, I
had acquired, but where I could attain no information beyond what
regarded worming dogs, rowelling horses, and following foxes. I could
onl