loom, and the jarring clamour of the smith's steel hammer, abounded.

With this brief and imperfect notice we shall bid farewell to the ancient splendour of the Kirkgate-it is with its degenerate days that our story has intercourse; and the persons destined to move, and act, and suffer, in our authentic drama, are among the humblest of its inhabitants. The time too with which our narrative commences and terminates, is a season somewhat uncongenial for descriptive excursions. A ruinous street, and a labouring people, on whom the last night of December is descending in angry winds and cold sleets and snows, present few attractions to dealers in genteel fictions, and few flowers, either natural or figurative, for embellishing a tale. With all these drawbacks we have one advantage, which a mind delighting in nature and truth will not willingly forego; the tale, humble and brief as it is, possesses truth beyond all power of impeachment, and follows conscientiously the traditional and accredited narrative without staying to array it and adorn it in those vain and gaudy embellishments with which fiction seeks to encumber a plain and simple story.

The night which brings in the new year to the good people of Dumfries, has long been a night of friendly meetings, and social gladness and carousal. The grave and the devout lay aside for the time the ordinary vesture of sanctity and religious observance; the sober and the self-denying revel among the good things of this life, with a fervour, perhaps, augmented by previous penance; and even some of the shining lights of the Scottish kirk have been observed to let their splendour subside for the evening, that, like the sun, perhaps they might come forth from darkness with an increase of glory. The matron suspends her thrift, and arrays herself in her marriage mantle-the maiden, and the bond-maiden, flaunt and smile, side by side, in ribbons and scarfs, and snooded love-locks, all arranged with a careful and a cunning hand, to assist merry blue or languishing black eyes in making. mischief among the hearts of men. Each house smells from floor to roof with the good things of this life-the hare caught in her twilight march

through the cottager's kaleyard, or the wild duck shot by moonlight, while tasting the green herbage on some lonely stream bank-send up, stewed or roasted, a savour the more gladsome because it comes seldom ; while the flavour of smuggled gin and brandy is not the less acceptable, because the dangers of the deep sea and the terrors on shore of the armed revenue officers, were in the way of its gracing once a year the humble man's supper-board.

Amid the sound of mirth and revelry, and shining of lamps and can dles in porch and window, there was one house, covered with humble thatch, and of altogether a modest or rather mean exterior, which seemed not to sympathize in the joys of the evening. A small and lonely candle twinkled in a small and solitary window, and no sound proceeded from its door, save now and then the moving of the slow and aged feet of the mistress of this rude cottage. As the more roving and regardless youths passed the window, they were observed to lower their voices, regulate their steps, and smooth down their deportment to something approaching to devotional. Within the window sat one who, ungracious in the outward man, and coarse in his apparel, and owner only of a bedstead and couch, and a few controversial books, was nevertheless a man of note in those days when things external were of little note in the eyes of a presbyterian minister. Indeed, had one of the present generation glanced his eye through the coarse green glass of the low browed window, and seen an old man, whose silver hairs were half concealed by a night cap, not over pure; whose bent shoulders bore a plaid of homely chequered gray, fastened on the bo som with a wooden skewer-while over his knees lay a large old Bible clasped with iron, on which his eyes were cast with a searching and a serious glance-our youth of Saxon broad-cloth and French ruffles would have thought of something much more humble than the chief elder of the old kirk of Dumfries. It was indeed no other than William Warpentree, one of the burning and shining lights of the ancient of days, when serious prayers, and something of a shrewd and proverbial cast of

worldly counsel, were not the less esteemed that they pertained to a humble weaver. His consequence, even in this lowly situation, was felt far and wide; of the fair webs which came from the devout man's looms, let the long linsey-woolsey garments of the matrons of Dumfries even at this day bear witness-garments which surpass silk in beauty, while many a blythesome bridal and sorrowful burial bore token, in their fine linen vestments, of the skill of William's right hand. Indeed, it was one of the good man's own practical proverbs, that there was more vanity in the bier than the bridal. Though sufficiently conscious of those gifts, he wished them to be forgotten in the sedate and austere elder of the kirk; and long before the time of our tale he had become distinguished for the severity of his discipline, and his gifts in kirk controversy.

But the influence of ancient times of relaxation and joy, of which he had been a partaker in his youth, had not wholly ceased; and an observer of human nature might see, that amid all the controversial contemplations in which he seemed involved, the jolly old domestic god of Scottish cheer and moderate hilarity had not yet yielded entire place to the Crumb of Comfort, the Cup of Cold Water to the Parched Spirit, The Afflicted Man's best Companion and Boston's Fourfold State. He lifted his eyes from the page, and said, " Marion, even before I proceed to matters of spiritual import, let me know what thou hast prepared for the nourishment of the bodies of those whom we have invited according to the fashion of our fathers to sit out the old year and welcome in the new. Name me the supper dishes, I pray thee, that I may know if thou hast scorned the Babylonian observances of the sister church of England in the matter of creature-comforts. What hast thou prepared for supper, I pray thee?no superstitious meats and drinks, Marion, I hope, but humble and holy, and halesome things which nourish the body without risk to the soul. dread, by thy long silence, woman, that thou hast been seeking to pamper the episcopalian propensities of our appetites by ceremonious and sinful saint-day dishes.

I

"Ah! William Warpentree," said

his douce spouse Marion, covering an old oaken table as she spoke, with a fine pattern'd table cloth, wove by no other hand than that of the devout owner of the feast himself; "Ah!" said she, "what words have escaped from thy lips-superstitious meats and drinks," said ye? "Na! na! I cared mair for the welfare of the spirit, and the hope to sing hallelujahs in Abram's bosom, as ye say in prayer yoursel; Ah! Willie, they say, who kenned you in your youth, that ye would sooner gang to Sarah's." "Woman, woman," said the douce man; "what say ye to the supper?" "First, then," quoth his spouse, forsaking unwillingly this darling road of domestic controversy and strife; "what have ye to say against a dish of collops scored, nicely simmered owre the head amang Spanish onions?" "Spanish onions, woman," said the elder; "I like not the sound." "Sound," said the dame, "would ye lose your supper for a sound? Had they grown in the garden of the Grand Inquisitor, and been sown by some pope or cardinal, then, man, ye might have had your scruples-but they grew in the garden of that upright man, David Bogie; I'll warrant ye'll call the scored collops episcopalian, since they were cut by a knife of Sheffield steel. "Pass to the other viands and vivers, woman," said the elder. "Gladly will I," said his obedient partner; "the mair gladly because it's a gallant Scottish haggis full and fat, and fair. Hearken to the ingredients, Willie, and try them by the scrupulous kirk standard of forbidden luxuries. What say ye against the crushed heart of the kindly corn--a singed sheep's head--plotted, par-boiled, shorn small with a slice of broiled liver ground to powder, and a dozen of onions sliced like wafers, powdered with pepper, and showered owre with salt; the whole mingled with the fat of the ox, and stowed in a bag as pure as burnbleached linen, and secured with a peg that would make seven spoolpins. I'll warrant it will spout to the rannel-tree when ye stick the knife in it. My certe will't."

At this description of the national dish, the old man displaced the book from his knee, placed his hand on his waistcoat, where time and daily me

ditation had made some spare cloth, and rising, paced from side to side of his humble abode, with a look of subdued and decent impatience. "I wonder; wonder is an unwise word," said he, checking himself; " for nought is wonderful, save the divine presence, and the divine works; but what in the name of warp and waft -a mechanical exclamation of surprise, and therefore not sinful-what can stay Deacon Treddle, my ain dear doon neighbour, and what can keep Baillie Burnewin! I hope his prentice boy has not burnt his forge again, and made the douce man swear." "Saul to gude man, but ye feu ill." "But we have all our times of weakness-even I myself," he muttered in a low and inaudible tone, "have matters to mourn for as well as the wicked; I have buttered my own breakfast with the butter which honest men's wives have given me for anointing their webs. I have worn, but that was in my youth, the snawwhite linen purloined from many customers in hanks and cuts. And I have looked with an unrighteous eye after that dark-eyed and straight-limbed damosel Mary Macmillan; even I who rebuked her and counselled her before the session, and made even the anointed minister envy the fluency and scriptural force of my admonishment. But in gude time here comes auld Burnewin," and extending his hand as he spoke, it was grasped by a hand protruded from a broad brown mantle, and tinged by exposure at the forge into the hue of a tinker's travelling wallet. "Whole threads, and a weel gaun loom to thee, my douce auld fere," said the Baillie, removing a slouched hat as he spoke, and displaying a rough jolly countenance, on which the heat of his smithy fire had inflicted a tinge that would have done honour to Vulcan's forehand hammer man. "And a hissing welding heat, and an unburnt tew-iron, and ale fizzing and foaming for thee in thy vocation, my old comrade," returned the weaver, in the current language of his friend's trade. " Aha! Marion lass," said the blacksmith, "I have nae forgot that we were once younkers running among the moonlight on the moat-brae-here's a shawl-I wish it silk for thy sake ―ye maun wear it for me at Paste

and Yule, and the seven trades dance, and other daimen times;" and enveloping the not unwilling shoulders of the matron in his present, he seated himself by the side of a blazing hearth fire, and promising supper board.

It was now eleven o'clock-the reign of the old year was within an hour of its close, and the din of the street had subsided, partly from the lateness of the hour, and the fall of a shower of thin and powdery snow which abated a little the darkness of the night. A loud scream, and the sound of something falling, were heard at the end of the little narrow close or street which descended from the old Kirk-gate to the residence of the elder. "There's the sound of Deacon Treddle's voice," said Marion, “ if ever I heard it in my life; and the cry too of sore affliction." Away without bonnet or mantle ran the old friends of the expected deacon; they found him lying with his face to the pavement, his hands clutched like one in agony, while from a shattered punchbowl ran the rich and reeking contents. "As I live by drink, and sometimes bread," said the Baillie, "this is a hapless tumble; I feel the smell of as good brandy punch as ever reeked aneath the nose of the town council-there it runs; water, saith the word, cannot be gathered from the ground, nor brandy punch from the street, saith Baillie Burnewin." "Peace, peace, I pray thee,” said the elder; "speak, Thomas Treddle, speak; art thou harmed in spirit, or hurt in body?" "The spirit is running from him," said the son of the forge, in the true spirit of citizenship; "dost thou not feel its fragrance?" "Peace, again I say," enjoined the elder; " I say unto you, something fearful hath happened unto him; he has felt an evil touch, or he has seen some unholy sight; such things have been rife ere now in the land;" and he endeavoured to raise his prostrate friend from the pavement.

"I renounce the sinfulness of long thrums and short ellwands, now and for ever more, Amen;" muttered the overthrown head of the venerable calling of the weavers. "Long thrums and short ellwands," said he of the smithy to him of the loom; "I'll remember his confession, how