was aye scored up, and unless the dignity of the family should actually require it, it would be a sin to distress a widow woman.  None was so able—­but, on the other hand, none was likely to be less willing—­to stand his friend upon the present occasion, than Gibbie Girder, the man of tubs and barrels already mentioned, who had headed the insurrection in the matter of the egg and butter subsidy.  “But a’ comes o’ taking folk on the right side, I trow,” quoted Caleb to himself; “and I had ance the ill hap to say he was but a Johnny New-come in our town, and the carle bore the family an ill-will ever since.  But he married a bonny young quean, Jean Lightbody, auld Lightbody’s daughter, him that was in the steading of Loup-the-Dyke; and auld Lightbody was married himsell to Marion, that was about my lady in the family forty years syne.  I hae had mony a day’s daffing wi’ Jean’s mither, and they say she bides on wi’ them.  The carle has Jacobuses and Georgiuses baith, an ane could get at them; and sure I am, it’s doing him an honour him or his never deserved at our hand, the ungracious sumph; and if he loses by us a’thegither, he is e’en cheap o’t:  he can spare it brawly.”  Shaking off irresolution, therefore, and turning at once upon his heel, Caleb walked hastily back to the cooper’s house, lifted the latch withotu ceremony, and, in a moment, found himself behind the “hallan,” or partition, from which position he could, himself unseen, reconnoitre the interior of the “but,” or kitchen apartment, of the mansion.

Reverse of the sad menage at the Castle of Wolf’s Crag, a bickering fire roared up the cooper’s chimney.  His wife, on the one side, in her pearlings and pudding-sleeves, put the last finishing touch to her holiday’s apparel, while she contemplated a very handsome and good-humoured face in a broken mirror, raised upon the “bink” (the shelves on which the plates are disposed) for her special accommodation.  Her mother, old Luckie Loup-the-Dyke, “a canty carline” as was within twenty miles of her, according to the unanimous report of the “cummers,” or gossips, sat by the fire in the full glory of a grogram gown, lammer beads, and a clean cockernony, whiffing a snug pipe of tobacco, and superintending the affairs of the kitchen; for—­sight more interesting to the anxious heart and craving entrails of the desponding seneschal than either buxom dame or canty cummer—­there bubbled on the aforesaid bickering fire a huge pot, or rather cauldron, steaming with beef and brewis; while before it revolved two spits, turned each by one of the cooper’s apprentices, seated in the opposite corners of the chimney, the one loaded with a quarter of mutton, while the other was graced with a fat goose and a brace of wild ducks.  The sight and scent of such a land of plenty almost wholly overcame the drooping spirits of Caleb.  He turned, for a moment’s space to reconnoitre the “ben,” or parlour end of the house, and there saw a sight scarce less affecting to his