ever there's knavery in all crafts, save mine." "Avaunt, avaunt, whither wilt thou carry me!" exclaimed the deacon; "that man hath perfect blessedness, who walketh not astray in counsel of ungodly men." "Oh! that I could mind a prayer now, when a prayer might be of service, and no be borne away owre the fiend's left shoulder, like holy Willie gaun home with a customer's web." " The man's demented," muttered the Elder; "possess'd by a demon--fairly possess'd-here, Baillie, bear thou his heels, I'll bear up his head, and let us carry him home, and deliver him up to the admonition of dame Marion." And lifting aloft the weaver as they spoke, away they marched but not without speech or resistance. "A fiend at my head, and a fiend at my feet! Lost beyond redemption! Lost beyond redemption! Oh! if I maun be doomed, let me lie in my grave like other sinners, and no be borne away to be picked by the fiend behind the stake and ryse dyke that divides the foul place from purgatory, like a gled picking a cock-bird." Their entrance into the chamber beside dame Marion, seemed at first to augment his terror-he shut his eyes, and clenched his hands in the resolute agony of despair. "Ah! the black pit, and the burning fire, wi' fiends to torment me in the shape of holy Willie Warpentree, and that wicked body Baillie Burnewin. A she-fiend too! Na, then there's nae redemption for me-I'm in the hollowest hell, I'll warrant me!" and half unclosing his eyes, they wandered with something of a half insane and half suspicious scrutiny around the elder's apartment.

At this. irreverent allusion to herself and her sex, the yoke-fellow of the elder exclaimed: "Ungracious and graceless body, I'll she-fiend thee! and lifting up a spoonful of the fat liquid in which the haggis had been immersed, she threw it fairly in his face. This application was much more effectual than the grave inquiries of her husband; the liquid, too cool to scald, and yet hot enough to make flesh feel, caused him to utter a scream. "Weel done, she-fiend!" said the blacksmith, "if a woman's wit brings nae a man to his senses, I wot nae what will." The afflicted weaver opened his eyes, exclaimed,

"praise be blest!" leaped to his feet, shouted, "redeemed! redeemed!won from the clutches of the auld enemy, and set on my feet at the fire-side of my sworn friend, William Warpentree. But, Oh! man, I have got such a fright this blessed evening as will gang wi' me to my grave.”

man

Fright!" said Marion, "what could have frightened ye in the douce Kirkgate of Dumfries; the kirk at your lug, the kirkyard at your elbow, and the fear o' God afore ye, and a gallant bowl of brandy punch in your hand. I feel the smell of the spilt mercies yet, ye donard bodie; what fiend made ye coup the creels, and scream yon way?" "Woman, woman," said the elder to his spouse, "bridle thy unruly tongue, and curb thy irreverent speech-this hath, peradventure, seen something; which he will do well to disburthen his conscience in describing." "I shall make bauld to tell ye," said the deacon of the weavers, "how it happened, and whereabout; but, Oh! man, never let sinful flesh pride itself again in the joys of this world. Who would have thought that a man like me, a bowl of reeking punch in one hand, and buttered short cake in the other; the town clock chapping eleven, a glass in my head, the pavement aneath, and my friend's door open before me, should in ae moment be spoiled and bereaved of all in which he had sinfully prided. Oh! William Warpentree-flesh blood-flesh and blood." Here he wiped away the moisture of Marion's haggis from his face, muttered, "Grace be near me, I'm barely come to my senses yet-Lord, I'll never forget it-how can I-I'm a doomed creature, that's certain." The elder enjoined him to tell why he was disquieted-the elder's wife desired to know what elf or brownie had scared him out of any little sense he ever laid claim to; while the Baillie declared it would be a droll tale that would recompense him for the privation of the spilt punch.

and

"Oh! hard, hard!" exclaimed the deacon of the weavers; "I maun be frightened out of my senses ae minute with the Packman's ghost, and fairly die in describing it the next." "The Packman's ghost!" exclaimed the three auditors, at once gathering round the affrighted deacon. "Yes!

the Packman's ghost," said he;" give me leave to breathe, and I shall tell ye. As I came out to the street, there was a slight fall of snow; the way was as white afore me as a linen web-a light glimmered here and there-the brightest was in the home of Lowrie Linchpin, the Haunted House ye ken; the carle lies in a departing state. As I looked o'er to his window, I thought to myself, the minister or some of the elders will be there, doubtless, and a bonnie death-bed story he'll make on't, if he tells the truth. And then I stood and thought, may be, on the wild stories the neighbours tell of sights seen at midnight around his house how he cannot rest in his bed, but converses with his dumb horse to drown darker thoughts; while atween his own house and the stable, the shadowy fingers of an auld Packman are seen plucking at him. A golden pose Auld Linchpin got by nicking the pedlar's thrapple, else there are many liars. There was my douce gudemother, ye mind her weel Baillie, many a mutchkin of brandy you and auld Brandyburn, and John Borland, and Edgar Wright, and ane I winna name emptied ahint her hallan. Aweel thae days are gane, and my gudemother too; but mony a time she told me, when she was a stripling of a lassie, that the auld Packman (nae other name had he) was seen coming laden, horse and man, along the lane to the house of Lowrie Linchpin. He was never more seen; but his horse ran masterless about the fields, and mony a ride she and Peg Lawson, and Nell Thomson had: their daughters are fine madams now, and would nae like to hear that their mothers rode round the town meadows on a stray horse; but its true that I tell ye."

"And now," said the deacon, "I am come to the present concernment. I stood looking at old Ne'er-do-good's house, and thinking how soon he might be summoned, and what a black account he would render; when lo, and behold! what should I see coming towards me from auld Lowrie's, but a creature,-the queerest creature that een ever saw: I thought I should have sunk where I stood, with dread, and yet the worst had not happened. I could nae for my VOL. VI.

soul take my een from it, and straight towards me it came. I think I see it yet-the breeks of hodan gray, the Packman plaid, and the Kilmarnock bonnet; the hair of my own head, gray and thin though it be, raised the bonnet from my own brow. Oh! William Warpentree, could I have remembered but three words of thy prayer which seven times to my knowledge ye have poured out before the men who 'swear by the wolf's head and shuttle in its mouth, I might have come off crouse perchance, and triumphant. But the world winna credit it-I tried to pray-I tried to bless myself, I could neither do the one nor the other, and curses and discreditable oaths came to my lips; I shall never dare to sing a psalm, or speak of a thing that's holy again."

The deacon's story had proceeded thus far; Marion had with a light foot, and a diligent hand, and an ear that drank in every word of the narrative, replenished the table with a noble haggis reeking and rich, and distilling streams of amber from every pore; while from the collops scored a smoke thick and savoury ascended: and a table of inferior size exhibited an ancient punch bowl, curiously hooped and clasped, flanked by a brace of gardevines, filled to the corks with choice gin and brandy. Upon the whole looked the elder and Baillie with a strong wish that the deacon's adventure with the pedlar's apparition would come to a close. A hurried foot in the street, and a mighty rap, rap, rap at the door, equal to the demolishing of any ordinary hinges, accomplished the good man's wish. Ere Marion could say

"Come in,"-in started an ancient Kirkgate dame, her hood awry, and a drinking-cup, which her hurry had not hindered her to drain, though she found no leisure to set it down, was still in her right hand. She stood with her lips apart, and pointed towards the haunted house of old Linchpin, half choked with agitation and haste. "The saints be near us, woman; have ye seen a spirit also?" said Baillie Burnewin." Spirit," said the dame, an interrogatory suggesting words which she could not otherwise find-"ten times worse than a thousand spirits-I would ra

F

ther face all the shadows of sinners which haunt the earth, than sit five minutes longer by the bedside of auld Lowrie; the fiends have hold of him, there's little doubt of that-for he's talking to them, and bargaining for a cozie seat in the lowing heugh-its fearful to hear him-and what can have brought the evil spirits around him already-naebody will dispute possession; and then he thinks the Packman is at his elbow, and begins to speak about the old throatcutting story: but his wife, a wicked carlin and a stout, lays ever her hand on his mouth and cries out, "he's raving, sirs, he's raving!"But I think I'm raving myself. Come away, Elder Warpentree, and try and speak solace to his saul, though it be a rotten and a doomed ane; he may as well gang to hell with the words of salvation sounding in his ear."

Sore groaned the devout man at this ungracious and untimely summons; he looked on the smoking supper-table; "he thought on the wretched and the worthless being, for whose soul's welfare he was called to minister by prayer and supplication-and despairing of success in his intercession, he threw himself into a chair, pulled it to the head of the table, laid aside his cap, and spread forth his hands like one ready to bless the savoury morsel before him. The Christian spirit of the messenger, reinforced by strong drink, came down like a whirlwind, "A bonnie elder of God's kirk, indeed, to sit down to his smoking supper, with his full-fed cronies aside him and leave a poor soul to sink among the fathomless waters of eternity. Had it been a douce and a devout person that was at death's door, the haste might have been less; but a : being covered with crimes as with a garment, whose left-hand clutched men's gold, and whose right-hand wrought murder, it's a burning shame and a crying scandal, not to fly and seek to save, and send him the road of repentance. A bonnie elder, indeed! O my conscience, Sir, if I'm but spared to Sunday-if I stand nae up and proclaim ye for a sensual and selfish man, who shuns the dying man's couch for the sake of a savoury supper, may the holy minister give

me a hot face, clad in a penitential garment on the cutty stool." During this outpouring of remonstrance and wrath the good man found leisure for reflection; he rose ere she concluded, assumed his hat and mantle, and saying, "I will go to the couch of this wicked man, but wicked should I be to hold out the hope that an hour of repentance will atone for an age of crime-It's but casting precious words away, ane might as well try to make damask napery out of sackcloth thrums, as make a member for bliss out of such a sinner as Lowrie Linchpin."

"

When the elder entered the dying man's abode he found him seated in his arm chair, pale and exhausted, his clothes torn to shreds, and his hair (as lint, white and long, as if it had waved over the temples of a saint) scattered about in handfuls; while his wife, a stern and stout old dame, pinioned him down in his seat, and fixed upon him two fierce and threatening eyes, of which he seemed to be in awe. "And what in the fiend's name brought auld Wylie Warpentree here at this uncivil hour, when we have more distress than heart can well endure," said she of the haunted house; " are ye come to steal our purse under the pretence of prayer, like bonnie Elder Haudthegrup? de'el may care if ye were all dancing on the morning air in a St. Johnstone cravat, the land would be well rid of ye." "Woman, woman," said the elder, in a tone of sorrow and Christian submission, "wherefore should ye asperse the servants of Him above; I come not here to take, neither come I hither to steal, but I come to one sick and subdued in spirit, sick even unto death, for the hand of the enemy will soon be upon him. Oh man!' said he, addressing the dying person, "if ye had seven years to live, as ye may have but seven minutes; if your soul was as pure as the unfallen snow, now descending at your window, instead of being stained as with ink, and spotted as with crimson, I say unto you repent-repent-cast thyself in the ashes-groan and spread thy hands night, and morn, and noontide-thy spirit will find it all too little to atone for thy follies, for thy faults, and for- "Devil! wilt

"

AND now the outlines of the chimneys and house-tops began to cut ever more sharply and sharply against the æthereal back ground, and the eastern gate of heaven, 66 soon, soon to glow with a bloody blush," reflected a heart-cooling, moony radiance from its marble valves,-when Nina L, unable to sleep, from the united ponderosity of her heart, and the atmosphere-and tired with contemplating the bronzed Hymens, whose hands supported the luxuriant draperies of her virgin bed, raised up her fragrant head from the lace-trimmed pillows of down. Without waiting to descend the steps in a regular and moral manner, she threw herself out on the thick leopard skin; and hastily induing her pearl-coloured slippers, and wreathing her round arms and sweeping shoulders in a cashmeer,-the whiteankled one moved timidly (though alone) over the painted-velvet carpet towards the aristocratical semicircle of emblazoned windows which formed the southern end of her voluptuous salon à coucher. Her flexible fingers turned the pliant locks of the centre one, and regardless of appearances (i. e. passengers) she leant out of her balcony like the Venetian donzellas in Paolo Veronese, or (to reduce my comparison to the level of your comprehension, Mr. Simkins!) like Miss O'Neill in Juliet.-Though on second thoughts I believe I shall cross out this last touch, because she leant like no creature I ever saw; except herself-stop a bit! Has Parmegiano ever painted the kind of subject? N-p-n-no! I'm afraid not! Why then Sir, he ought to betreated exactly as your baulked curiosity dictates:- for depend upon it you have no chance of coming within nine hundred and seventy-three degrees of her longi-altitude I mean!But we'll proceed with this tale a

little, or else Nina will certainly catch cold by standing so long in the vapoury dews of morn.

The gas was now waning fast; so were the patrole and watchmen. With creaks, rumbles, gee-whut's, and the smell of matting, cabbages, &c., market carts slowly progressed to THE GARDEN! from the delightful villages of Isleworth, Twickenham, and Turnham-green. Several noticeable men with black silk stockings, were returning from a high court-plenary of literature and French wines one might see at a glance that they were famous in puns, poetry, philosophy, and exalted criticism! Briefly, they were the wits of London! One of them "soaring aloft in the high region of his fancies, with his garlands and singing robes about him," chaunted in the ringing emptiness of the streets," Diddle, diddle dumpkins." Nina no doubt shrank within her shadowy bower (if you can call a room nine-and-twenty feet long a bower) from the hazy vision of these vigilants; for though succes sive and inimical images might disturb the unity and completeness of her idea (which complex accumulation of images, troublesome to be disentangled, put in place, and labelled, is usually, and absurdly termed the act of forgetfulness; because the said forgetfulness proceeds not from action but its mathematical reverse, all which is extremely irrelevant in hoc loco) yet the peculiar build of the house, its striking portico, and the lofty stained-glass window might stick more barbed in their brain. The owner's name might easily be found in the Court Guide, and then the public be extremely refreshed with the incident of Nina L. displaying her pretty self, half naked! (the good-nature of the ladies and the-what's the word-of the men will take this trifling addition for