ok-learned as
yoursell?--But ye like to gar folk look like fools--ye can do that to Sir
Arthur, and the minister his very sell."

"Nature has been beforehand with me, Grizel, in both these instances,
and in another which shall be nameless--but take a glass of ale, Grizel,
and proceed with your story, for it waxes late."

"Jenny's just warming your bed, Monkbarns, and ye maun e'en wait till
she's done.--Weel, I was at the search that our gudesire, Monkbarns that
then was, made wi' auld Rab Tull's assistance;--but ne'er-be-licket could
they find that was to their purpose. And sae after they had touzled out
mony a leather poke-full o' papers, the town-clerk had his drap punch at
e'en to wash the dust out of his throat--we never were glass-breakers in
this house, Mr. Lovel, but the body had got sic a trick of sippling and
tippling wi' the bailies and deacons when they met (which was amaist
ilka night) concerning the common gude o' the burgh, that he couldna
weel sleep without it--But his punch he gat, and to bed he gaed; and in
the middle of the night he got a fearfu' wakening!--he was never just
himsell after it, and he was strucken wi' the dead palsy that very day
four years. He thought, Mr. Lovel, that he heard the curtains o' his
bed fissil, and out he lookit, fancying, puir man, it might hae been the
cat--But he saw--God hae a care o' us! it gars my flesh aye creep, though
I hae tauld the story twenty times--he saw a weel-fa'ard auld gentleman
standing by his bedside, in the moonlight, in a queer-fashioned dress,
wi' mony a button and band-string about it, and that part o' his
garments which it does not become a leddy to particulareeze, was baith
side and wide, and as mony plies o't as of ony Hamburgh skipper's--He had
a beard too, and whiskers turned upwards on his upper-lip, as lang as
baudrons'--and mony mair particulars there were that Rab Tull tauld
o', but they are forgotten now--it's an auld story. Aweel, Rab was a
just-living man for a country writer--and he was less feared than maybe
might just hae been expected; and he asked in the name o' goodness what
the apparition wanted--and the spirit answered in an unknown tongue. Then
Rab said he tried him wi' Erse, for he cam in his youth frae the braes
of Glenlivat--but it wadna do. Aweel, in this strait, he bethought him
of the twa or three words o' Latin that he used in making out the town's
deeds, and he had nae sooner tried the spirit wi' that, than out cam sic