not know the shortest, nor indeed any road to Glasgow;
and as, in the circumstances in which I stood, despatch was of the
greatest consequence, I determined to consult Andrew Fairservice on the
subject, as the nearest and most authentic authority within my reach.
Late as it was, I set off with the intention of ascertaining this
important point, and after a few minutes' walk reached the dwelling of
the gardener.

Andrew's dwelling was situated at no great distance from the exterior
wall of the garden--a snug comfortable Northumbrian cottage, built of
stones roughly dressed with the hammer, and having the windows and doors
decorated with huge heavy architraves, or lintels, as they are called, of
hewn stone, and its roof covered with broad grey flags, instead of
slates, thatch, or tiles. A jargonelle pear-tree at one end of the
cottage, a rivulet and flower-plot of a rood in extent in front, and a
kitchen-garden behind; a paddock for a cow, and a small field, cultivated
with several crops of grain, rather for the benefit of the cottager than
for sale, announced the warm and cordial comforts which Old England, even
at her most northern extremity, extends to her meanest inhabitants.

As I approached the mansion of the sapient Andrew, I heard a noise,
which, being of a nature peculiarly solemn, nasal, and prolonged, led me
to think that Andrew, according to the decent and meritorious custom of
his countrymen, had assembled some of his neighbours to join in family
exercise, as he called evening devotion. Andrew had indeed neither wife,
child, nor female inmate in his family. "The first of his trade," he
said, "had had eneugh o'thae cattle." But, notwithstanding, he sometimes
contrived to form an audience for himself out of the neighbouring Papists
and Church-of-Englandmen--brands, as he expressed it, snatched out of the
burning, on whom he used to exercise his spiritual gifts, in defiance
alike of Father Vaughan, Father Docharty, Rashleigh, and all the world of
Catholics around him, who deemed his interference on such occasions an
act of heretical interloping. I conceived it likely, therefore, that the
well-disposed neighbours might have assembled to hold some chapel of ease
of this nature. The noise, however, when I listened to it more
accurately, seemed to proceed entirely from the lungs of the said Andrew;
and when I interrupted it by entering the house, I found Fairservice
alone, combating as he best could, with long word