ad to see you, though--glad to see you.--Yes, here I am; you will
find me the same good-natured old fool that I was at Smyrna--never look
how I am to get in money again--always laying it out. Never mind--it was
written in my forehead, as the Turk says.--I will go up now and change
my dress--you will sup with me when I come back--Mrs. Dods will toss us
up something--a brandered fowl will be best, Mrs. Dods, with some
mushrooms, and get us a jug of mulled wine--plottie, as you call it--to
put the recollection of the old Presbyterian's common sewer out of my
head."

So saying, up stairs marched the traveller to his own apartment, while
Tyrrel, seizing upon a candle, was about to do the same.

"Mr. Touchwood is in the blue room, Mrs. Dods; I suppose I may take
possession of the yellow one?"

"Suppose naething about the matter, Maister Francis Tirl, till ye tell
me downright where ye have been a' this time, and whether ye hae been
murdered or no?"

"I think you may be pretty well satisfied of that, Mrs. Dods?"

"Trot! and so I am in a sense; and yet it gars me grue to look upon ye,
sae mony days and weeks it has been since I thought ye were rotten in
the moulds. And now to see ye standing before me hale and feir, and
crying for a bedroom like ither folk!"

"One would almost suppose, my good friend," said Tyrrel, "that you were
sorry at my having come alive again."

"It's no for that," replied Mrs. Dods, who was peculiarly ingenious in
the mode of framing and stating what she conceived to be her grievances;
"but is it no a queer thing for a decent man like yoursell, Maister
Tirl, to be leaving your lodgings without a word spoken, and me put to
a' these charges in seeking for your dead body, and very near taking my
business out of honest Maister Bindloose's hands, because he kend the
cantrips of the like of you better than I did?--And than they hae putten
up an advertisement down at the Waal yonder, wi' a' their names at it,
setting ye forth, Maister Francie, as are of the greatest blackguards
unhanged; and wha, div ye think, is to keep ye in a creditable house, if
that's the character ye get?"

"You may leave that to me, Mrs. Dods--I assure you that matter shall be
put to rights to your satisfaction; and I think, so long as we have
known each other, you may take my word that I am not undeserving the
shelter of your roof for a single night, (I shall ask it no longer,)
until my character is sufficiently cleared. It was