panion, "that Mr. Treddles might as weel
have put my wife as Christie Steele into the Treddles Arms; for Christie
had been aye in service, and never in the public line, and so it's like
she is ganging back in the world, as I hear. Now, my wife had keepit a
victualling office."

"That would have been an advantage, certainly," I replied.

"But I am no sure that I wad ha' looten Eppie take it, if they had put
it in her offer."

"That's a different consideration."

"Ony way, I wadna ha' liked to have offended Mr. Treddles. He was a wee
toustie when you rubbed him again the hair; but a kind, weel-meaning
man."

I wanted to get rid of this species of chat, and finding myself near the
entrance of a footpath which made a short cut to Duntarkin, I put half a
crown into my guide's hand, bade him good-evening, and plunged into the
woods.

"Hout, sir--fie, sir--no from the like of you. Stay, sir, ye wunna find
the way that gate.--Odd's mercy, he maun ken the gate as weel as I do
mysel'. Weel, I wad like to ken wha the chield is."

Such were the last words of my guide's drowsy, uninteresting tone of
voice and glad to be rid of him, I strode out stoutly, in despite of
large stones, briers, and BAD STEPS, which abounded in the road I had
chosen. In the interim, I tried as much as I could, with verses from
Horace and Prior, and all who have lauded the mixture of literary with
rural life, to call back the visions of last night and this morning,
imagining myself settled in same detached farm of the estate of
Glentanner,--

"Which sloping hills around enclose--
Where many a birch and brown oak grows,"

when I should have a cottage with a small library, a small cellar, a
spare bed for a friend, and live more happy and more honoured than when
I had the whole barony. But the sight of Castle Treddles had disturbed
all my own castles in the air. The realities of the matter, like a stone
plashed into a limpid fountain, had destroyed the reflection of the
objects around, which, till this act of violence, lay slumbering on the
crystal surface, and I tried in vain to re-establish the picture which
had been so rudely broken. Well, then, I would try it another way. I
would try to get Christie Steele out of her PUBLIC, since she was not
striving in it, and she who had been my mother's governante should be
mine. I knew all her faults, and I told her history over to myself.

She was grand-daughter, I believe--at least some relative--o