nd, Steenie, if you can hold your tongue about this matter, you
shall sit, from this term downward, at an easier rent.'

'Mony thanks to your honour,' said Steenie, who saw easily in what
corner the wind was; 'doubtless I will be comformable to all your
honour's commands; only I would willingly speak wi' some powerful
minister on the subject, for I do not like the sort of sommons of
appointment whilk your honour's father'--

'Do not call the phantom my father!' said Sir John, interrupting him.

'Weel, then, the thing that was so like him,' said my gudesire; 'he
spoke of my coming back to see him this time twelvemonth, and it's a
weight on my conscience.'

'Aweel, then,' said Sir John, 'if you be so much distressed in mind, you
may speak to our minister of the parish; he is a douce man, regards the
honour of our family, and the mair that he may look for some patronage
from me.'

Wi' that, my father readily agreed that the receipt should be burnt, and
the laird threw it into the chimney with his ain hand. Burn it would
not for them, though; but away it flew up the lum, wi' a lang train of
sparks at its tail, and a hissing noise like a squib.

My gudesire gaed down to the Manse, and the minister, when he had heard
the story, said it was his real opinion that though my gudesire had gaen
very far in tampering with dangerous matters, yet, as he had refused the
devil's arles (for such was the offer of meat and drink) and had refused
to do homage by piping at his bidding, he hoped, that if he held a
circumspect walk hereafter, Satan could take little advantage by what
was come and gane. And, indeed, my gudesire, of his ain accord, lang
foreswore baith the pipes and the brandy--it was not even till the
year was out, and the fatal day past, that he would so much as take the
fiddle, or drink usquebaugh or tippeny.

Sir John made up his story about the jackanape as he liked himsell;
and some believe till this day there was no more in the matter than the
filching nature of the brute. Indeed, ye'll no hinder some to threap
that it was nane o' the auld Enemy that Dougal and my gudesire saw in
the laird's room, but only that wanchancy creature, the major, capering
on the coffin; and that, as to the blawing on the laird's whistle that
was heard after he was dead, the filthy brute could do that as weel as
the laird himsell, if no better. But Heaven kens the truth, whilk first
came out by the minister's wife, after Sir John and her