Well, who, though you have
hardly seen him before, will settle matters for you as well as if you
had been intimate for twenty years--and I will bring up the Doctor too,
if I can get him unloosed from the petticoat of that fat widow Blower,
that he has strung himself upon."

"I have no doubt you will do every thing with perfect accuracy, Captain.
At one o'clock, then, we meet at the Buck-stane--Stay, permit me to see
you to the door."

"By Cot! and it is not altogether so unnecessary," said the Captain;
"for the tamned woman with the besom might have some advantage in that
long dark passage, knowing the ground better than I do--tamn her, I will
have amends on her, if there be whipping-post, or ducking-stool, or a
pair of stocks in the parish!" And so saying, the Captain trudged off,
his spirits ever and anon agitated by recollection of the causeless
aggression of Meg Dods, and again composed to a state of happy serenity
by the recollection of the agreeable arrangement which he had made
between Mr. Tyrrel, and his friend Sir Bingo Binks.

We have heard of men of undoubted benevolence of character and
disposition, whose principal delight was to see a miserable criminal,
degraded alike by his previous crimes, and the sentence which he had
incurred, conclude a vicious and wretched life, by an ignominious and
painful death. It was some such inconsistency of character which induced
honest Captain MacTurk, who had really been a meritorious officer, and
was a good-natured, honourable, and well-intentioned man, to place his
chief delight in setting his friends by the ears, and then acting as
umpire in the dangerous rencontres, which, according to his code of
honour, were absolutely necessary to restore peace and cordiality. We
leave the explanation of such anomalies to the labours of craniologists,
for they seem to defy all the researches of the Ethic philosopher.

FOOTNOTE:

[I-18] A kettle of fish is a _fete-champetre_ of a particular kind, which
is to other _fetes-champetres_ what the piscatory eclogues of Brown or
Sannazario are to pastoral poetry. A large caldron is boiled by the side
of a salmon river, containing a quantity of water, thickened with salt
to the consistence of brine. In this the fish is plunged when taken, and
eaten by the company _fronde super viridi_. This is accounted the best
way of eating salmon, by those who desire to taste the fish in a state
of extreme freshness. Others prefer it after being kep