it was for Meg, since she had formed this
doughty resolution, that although her inn had decayed in custom, her
land had risen in value in a degree which more than compensated the
balance on the wrong side of her books, and, joined to her usual
providence and economy, enabled her to act up to her lofty purpose.

She prosecuted her trade too with every attention to its diminished
income; shut up the windows of one half of her house, to baffle the
tax-gatherer; retrenched her furniture; discharged her pair of
post-horses, and pensioned off the old humpbacked postilion who drove
them, retaining his services, however, as an assistant to a still more
aged hostler. To console herself for restrictions by which her pride was
secretly wounded, she agreed with the celebrated Dick Tinto to re-paint
her father's sign, which had become rather undecipherable; and Dick
accordingly gilded the Bishop's crook, and augmented the horrors of the
Devil's aspect, until it became a terror to all the younger fry of the
school-house, and a sort of visible illustration of the terrors of the
arch-enemy, with which the minister endeavoured to impress their infant
minds.

Under this renewed symbol of her profession, Meg Dods, or Meg Dorts, as
she was popularly termed, on account of her refractory humours, was
still patronised by some steady customers. Such were the members of the
Killnakelty Hunt, once famous on the turf and in the field, but now a
set of venerable grey-headed sportsmen, who had sunk from fox-hounds to
basket-beagles and coursing, and who made an easy canter on their quiet
nags a gentle induction to a dinner at Meg's. "A set of honest decent
men they were," Meg said; "had their sang and their joke--and what for
no? Their bind was just a Scots pint over-head, and a tappit-hen to the
bill, and no man ever saw them the waur o't. It was thae cockle-brained
callants of the present day that would be mair owerta'en with a puir
quart than douce folk were with a magnum."

Then there was a set of ancient brethren of the angle from Edinburgh,
who visited Saint Ronan's frequently in the spring and summer, a class
of guests peculiarly acceptable to Meg, who permitted them more latitude
in her premises than she was known to allow to any other body. "They
were," she said, "pawky auld carles, that kend whilk side their bread
was buttered upon. Ye never kend of ony o' them ganging to the spring,
as they behoved to ca' the stinking well yonder.--Na,