s just as likely."

I looked at the Bailie, who acknowledged, in a whisper, "that the gowk
had some reason for singing, ance in the year."

Meantime a staring half-clad wench or two came out of the inn and the
neighbouring cottages, on hearing the sound of our horses' feet. No one
bade us welcome, nor did any one offer to take our horses, from which we
had alighted; and to our various inquiries, the hopeless response of "Ha
niel Sassenach," was the only answer we could extract. The Bailie,
however, found (in his experience) a way to make them speak English. "If
I gie ye a bawbee," said he to an urchin of about ten years old, with a
fragment of a tattered plaid about him, "will you understand Sassenach?"

"Ay, ay, that will I," replied the brat, in very decent English. "Then
gang and tell your mammy, my man, there's twa Sassenach gentlemen come to
speak wi' her."

The landlady presently appeared, with a lighted piece of split fir
blazing in her hand. The turpentine in this species of torch (which is
generally dug from out the turf-bogs) makes it blaze and sparkle readily,
so that it is often used in the Highlands in lieu of candles. On this
occasion such a torch illuminated the wild and anxious features of a
female, pale, thin, and rather above the usual size, whose soiled and
ragged dress, though aided by a plaid or tartan screen, barely served the
purposes of decency, and certainly not those of comfort. Her black hair,
which escaped in uncombed elf-locks from under her coif, as well as the
strange and embarrassed look with which she regarded us, gave me the idea
of a witch disturbed in the midst of her unlawful rites. She plainly
refused to admit us into the house. We remonstrated anxiously, and
pleaded the length of our journey, the state of our horses, and the
certainty that there was not another place where we could be received
nearer than Callander, which the Bailie stated to be seven Scots miles
distant. How many these may exactly amount to in English measurement, I
have never been able to ascertain, but I think the double _ratio_ may be
pretty safely taken as a medium computation. The obdurate hostess treated
our expostulation with contempt. "Better gang farther than fare waur,"
she said, speaking the Scottish Lowland dialect, and being indeed a
native of the Lennox district--"Her house was taen up wi' them wadna like
to be intruded on wi' strangers. She didna ken wha mair might be
there--red-coats, it might b