rns. Why, man, you have been a hero--a perfect Sir William Wallace,
by all accounts. Come, my good lad, take hold of my arm;--I am not a
prime support in such a wind--but Caxon shall help us out--Here, you old
idiot, come on the other side of me.--And how the deil got you down to
that infernal Bessy's-apron, as they call it? Bess, said they? Why,
curse her, she has spread out that vile pennon or banner of womankind,
like all the rest of her sex, to allure her votaries to death and
headlong ruin."

"I have been pretty well accustomed to climbing, and I have long
observed fowlers practise that pass down the cliff."

"But how, in the name of all that is wonderful, came you to discover the
danger of the pettish Baronet and his far more deserving daughter?"

"I saw them from the verge of the precipice."

"From the verge!--umph--And what possessed you dumosa pendere procul de
rupe?--though dumosa is not the appropriate epithet--what the deil, man,
tempted ye to the verge of the craig?"

"Why--I like to see the gathering and growling of a coming storm--or,
in your own classical language, Mr. Oldbuck, suave mari magno--and
so forth--but here we reach the turn to Fairport. I must wish you
good-night."

"Not a step, not a pace, not an inch, not a shathmont, as I may
say,--the meaning of which word has puzzled many that think
themselves antiquaries. I am clear we should read salmon-length for
shathmont's-length. You are aware that the space allotted for the
passage of a salmon through a dam, dike, or weir, by statute, is the
length within which a full-grown pig can turn himself round. Now I have
a scheme to prove, that, as terrestrial objects were thus appealed to
for ascertaining submarine measurement, so it must be supposed that the
productions of the water were established as gauges of the extent of
land.--Shathmont--salmont--you see the close alliance of the sounds;
dropping out two h's, and a t, and assuming an l, makes the whole
difference--I wish to heaven no antiquarian derivation had demanded
heavier concessions."

"But, my dear sir, I really must go home--I am wet to the skin."

"Shalt have my night-gown, man, and slippers, and catch the antiquarian
fever as men do the plague, by wearing infected garments. Nay, I know
what you would be at--you are afraid to put the old bachelor to charges.
But is there not the remains of that glorious chicken-pie--which, meo
arbitrio, is better cold than hot--and that bottle of