mistress of a private house, who receives guests above her own degree.  She recommended, and even pressed, what she thought best, and was herself easily entreated to take a moderate share of the good cheer, in order to encourage her guests by her own example.  Often she interrupted herself, to express her regret that “my lord did not eat; that the Master was pyking a bare bane; that, to be sure, there was naething there fit to set before their honours; that Lord Allan, rest his saul, used to like a pouthered guse, and said it was Latin for a tass o’ brandy; that the brandy came frae France direct; for, for a’ the English laws and gaugers, the Wolf’s Hope brigs hadna forgotten the gate to Dunkirk.”

Here the cooper admonished his mother-in-law with his elbow, which procured him the following special notice in the progress of her speech: 

“Ye needna be dunshin that gate, John [Gibbie],” continued the old lady; “naebody says that ye ken whar the brandy comes frae; and it wadna be fitting ye should, and you the Queen’s cooper; and what signifies’t,” continued she, addressing Lord Ravenswood, “to king, queen, or kaiser whar an auld wife like me buys her pickle sneeshin, or her drap brandy-wine, to haud her heart up?”

Having thus extricated herself from her supposed false step, Dame Loup-the-Dyke proceeded, during the rest of the evening, to supply, with great animation, and very little assistance from her guests, the funds necessary for the support of the conversation, until, declining any further circulation of their glass, her guests requested her permission to retire to their apartments.

The Marquis occupied the chamber of dais, which, in every house above the rank of a mere cottage, was kept sacred for such high occasions as the present.  The modern finishing with plaster was then unknown, and tapestry was confined to the houses of the nobility and superior gentry.  The cooper, therefore, who was a man of some vanity, as well as some wealth, had imitated the fashion observed by the inferior landholders and clergy, who usually ornamented their state apartments with hangings of a sort of stamped leather, manufactured in the Netherlands, garnished with trees and aminals executed in copper foil, and with many a pithy sentence of morality, which, although couched in Low Dutch, were perhaps as much attended to in practice as if written in broad Scotch.  The whole had somewhat of a gloomy aspect; but the fire, composed of old pitch-barrel staves, blazed merrily up the chimney; the bed was decorated with linen of most fresh and dazzling whiteness, which had never before been used, and might, perhaps, have never been used at all, but for this high occasion.  On the toilette beside, stood an old-fashioned mirror, in a fillagree frame, part of the dispersed finery of the neighbouring castle.  It was flanked by a long-necked bottle of Florence wine, by which stood a glass enarly as tall, resembling in shape that which Teniers usually places in the hands