d's house in Anstruther Wester, where (and elsewhere, I
suspect) he had partaken of the bottle; indeed, to put the thing in our
cold modern way, the reverend gentleman was on the brink of _delirium
tremens_. It was a dark night, it seems; a little lassie came carrying a
lantern to fetch the curate home; and away they went down the street of
Anstruther Wester, the lantern swinging a bit in the child's hand, the
barred lustre tossing up and down along the front of slumbering houses,
and Mr. Thomson not altogether steady on his legs nor (to all
appearance) easy in his mind. The pair had reached the middle of the
bridge when (as I conceive the scene) the poor tippler started in some
baseless fear and looked behind him; the child, already shaken by the
minister's strange behaviour, started also; in so doing she would jerk
the lantern; and for the space of a moment the lights and the shadows
would be all confounded. Then it was that to the unhinged toper and the
twittering child, a huge bulk of blackness seemed to sweep down, to pass
them close by as they stood upon the bridge, and to vanish on the
farther side in the general darkness of the night. "Plainly the devil
come for Mr. Thomson!" thought the child. What Mr. Thomson thought
himself, we have no ground of knowledge; but he fell upon his knees in
the midst of the bridge like a man praying. On the rest of the journey
to the manse, history is silent; but when they came to the door, the
poor caitiff, taking the lantern from the child, looked upon her with so
lost a countenance that her little courage died within her, and she fled
home screaming to her parents. Not a soul would venture out; all that
night the minister dwelt alone with his terrors in the manse; and when
the day dawned, and men made bold to go about the streets, they found
the devil had come indeed for Mr. Thomson.

This manse of Anstruther Easter has another and a more cheerful
association. It was early in the morning, about a century before the
days of Mr. Thomson, that his predecessor was called out of bed to
welcome a Grandee of Spain, the Duke of Medina Sidonia, just landed in
the harbour underneath. But sure there was never seen a more decayed
grandee; sure there was never a duke welcomed from a stranger place of
exile. Half-way between Orkney and Shetland there lies a certain isle;
on the one hand the Atlantic, on the other the North Sea, bombard its
pillared cliffs; sore-eyed, short-living, inbred fish