I hate injustice, so let me do the honour in description to the Sawley banquet.  The tea-urn most literally corresponded to its name.  The table was decked out with divers platters, containing seed-cakes cut into rhomboids, almond biscuits, and ratafia-drops.  Also on the sideboard there were two salvers, each of which contained a congregation of glasses, filled with port and sherry.  The former fluid, as I afterward ascertained, was of the kind advertised as “curious,” and proffered for sale at the reasonable rate of sixteen shillings per dozen.  The banquet, on the whole, was rather peculiar than enticing; and, for the life of me, I could not divest myself of the idea that the self-same viands had figured, not long before, as funeral refreshments at a dirgie.  No such suspicion seemed to cross the mind of M’Alcohol, who hitherto had remained uneasily surveying his nails in a corner, but at the first symptom of food started forward, and was in the act of making a clean sweep of the china, when Sawley proposed the singular preliminary of a hymn.

The hymn was accordingly sung.  I am thankful to say it was such a one as I never heard before, or expect to hear again; and unless it was composed by the Reverend Saunders Peden in an hour of paroxysm on the moors, I cannot conjecture the author.  After this original symphony, tea was discussed, and after tea, to my amazement, more hot brandy-and-water than I ever remember to have seen circulated at the most convivial party.  Of course this effected a radical change in the spirits and conversation of the circle.  It was again my lot to be placed by the side of the fascinating Selina, whose sentimentality gradually thawed away beneath the influence of sundry sips, which she accepted with a delicate reluctance.  This time Dalgleish of Raxmathrapple had not the remotest chance.  M’Alcohol got furious, sang Gaelic songs, and even delivered a sermon in genuine Erse, without incurring a rebuke; while, for my own part, I must needs confess that I waxed unnecessarily amorous, and the last thing I recollect was the pressure of Mr. Sawley’s hand at the door, as he denominated me his dear boy, and hoped I would soon come back and visit Mrs. Sawley and Selina.  The recollection of these passages next morning was the surest antidote to my return.

Three weeks had elapsed, and still the Glenmutchkin Railway shares were at a premium, though rather lower than when we sold.  Our engineer, Watty Solder, returned from his first survey of the line, along with an assistant who really appeared to have some remote glimmerings of the science and practice of mensuration.  It seemed, from a verbal report, that the line was actually practicable; and the survey would have been completed in a very short time, “if,” according to the account of Solder, “there had been ae hoos in the glen.  But ever sin’ the distillery stoppit—­and that was twa year last Martinmas—­there wasna a hole whaur a Christian could lay his head, muckle less get white sugar to his toddy, forby the change-house at the clachan; and the auld lucky that keepit it was sair forfochten wi’ the palsy, and maist in the dead-thraws.  There was naebody else living within twal’ miles o’ the line, barring a taxman, a lamiter, and a bauldie.”