her house at Windywa's yonder,
which it is her leddyship's wull and pleasure to call Air-castle--and
they have a' their different turns, and some can clink verses, wi' their
tale, as weel as Rob Burns or Allan Ramsay--and some rin up hill and
down dale, knapping the chucky stanes to pieces wi' hammers, like sae
mony road-makers run daft--they say it is to see how the warld was
made!--and some that play on all manner of ten-stringed instruments--and
a wheen sketching souls, that ye may see perched like craws on every
craig in the country, e'en working at your ain trade, Maister Francie;
forby men that had been in foreign parts, or said they had been there,
whilk is a' ane, ye ken; and maybe twa or three draggletailed misses,
that wear my Leddy Penelope's follies when she has dune wi' them, as her
queans of maids wear her second-hand claithes. So, after her leddyship's
happy recovery, as they ca'd it, down cam the hail tribe of wild-geese,
and settled by the Well, to dine thereout on the bare grund, like a
wheen tinklers; and they had sangs, and tunes, and healths, nae doubt,
in praise of the fountain, as they ca'd the Well, and of Leddy Penelope
Penfeather; and, lastly, they behoved a' to take a solemn bumper of the
spring, which, as I'm tauld, made unco havoc amang them or they wan
hame; and this they ca'd picknick, and a plague to them! And sae the jig
was begun after her leddyship's pipe, and mony a mad measure has been
danced sin' syne; for down cam masons and murgeon-makers, and preachers
and player-folk, and Episcopalians and Methodists, and fools and
fiddlers, and Papists and pie-bakers, and doctors and drugsters; by the
shop-folk, that sell trash and trumpery at three prices--and so up got
the bonny new Well, and down fell the honest auld town of Saint Ronan's,
where blithe decent folk had been heartsome eneugh for mony a day before
ony o' them were born, or ony sic vapouring fancies kittled in their
cracked brains."

"What said your landlord, the Laird of Saint Ronan's, to all this?" said
Tyrrel.

"Is't _my_ landlord ye are asking after, Maister Francie?--the Laird of
Saint Ronan's is nae landlord of mine, and I think ye might hae minded
that.--Na, na, thanks be to Praise! Meg Dods is baith land_lord_ and
land_leddy_. Ill eneugh to keep the doors open as it is, let be facing
Whitsunday and Martinmas--an auld leather pock there is, Maister
Francie, in ane of worthy Maister Bindloose the sheriff-clerk's
pigeon-