‘I know it,’ replied his master.  ’And now, madam, if you will have the goodness to allow me to occupy the parlour you mentioned, as you are disappointed of your guests—­’

‘Certainly, sir,’ said Mrs. Mac-Candlish, and hastened to light the way with all the imperative bustle which an active landlady loves to display on such occasions.

‘Young man,’ said the Deacon to the servant, filling a glass, ‘ye’ll no be the waur o’ this, after your ride.’

‘Not a feather, sir; thank ye, your very good health, sir.’

‘And wha may your master be, friend?’

’What, the gentleman that was here? that’s the famous Colonel Mannering, sir, from the East Indies.’

‘What, him we read of in the newspapers?’

’Ay, ay, just the same.  It was he relieved Cuddieburn, and defended Chingalore, and defeated the great Mahratta chief, Ram Jolli Bundleman.  I was with him in most of his campaigns.’

‘Lord safe us,’ said the landlady; ’I must go see what he would have for supper; that I should set him down here!’

’O, he likes that all the better, mother.  You never saw a plainer creature in your life than our old Colonel; and yet he has a spice of the devil in him too.’

The rest of the evening’s conversation below stairs tending little to edification, we shall, with the reader’s leave, step up to the parlour.

CHAPTER XII

     Reputation! that’s man’s idol
     Set up against God, the Maker of all laws,
     Who hath commanded us we should not kill,
     And yet we say we must, for Reputation! 
     What honest man can either fear his own,
     Or else will hurt another’s reputation? 
     Fear to do base unworthy things is valour;
     If they be done to us, to suffer them
     Is valour too.

          BenJonson.

The Colonel was walking pensively up and down the parlour when the officious landlady reentered to take his commands.  Having given them in the manner he thought would be most acceptable ’for the good of the house,’ be begged to detain her a moment.

‘I think,’ he said, ’madam, if I understood the good people right, Mr. Bertram lost his son in his fifth year?’

‘O ay, sir, there’s nae doubt o’ that, though there are mony idle clashes about the way and manner, for it’s an auld story now, and everybody tells it, as we were doing, their ain way by the ingleside.  But lost the bairn was in his fifth year, as your honour says, Colonel; and the news being rashly tell’d to the leddy, then great with child, cost her her life that samyn night; and the Laird never throve after that day, but was just careless of everything, though, when his daughter Miss Lucy grew up, she tried to keep order within doors; but what could she do, poor thing?  So now they’re out of house and hauld.’

’Can you recollect, madam, about what time of the year the child was lost?’ The landlady, after a pause and some recollection, answered, ‘she was positive it was about this season’; and added some local recollections that fixed the date in her memory as occurring about the beginning of November 17—.