keep up their connection wi' the burgh, ye ken.»> « Sister Grizel, this is abominable,» interrupted Oldbuck; « I vow to Heaven ye might have raised the ghosts of every abbot of Trotcosey since the days of Waldimir, in the time you have been detailing the introduction to this single spectre-Learn to be succinct in your narrative -Imitate the concise style of old Aubrey, an experienced ghost-seer; who entered his memoranda on these subjects in a terse business-like manner, exempli gratia —‘At Cirencester, 5th March, 1670, was an apparition-Being demanded whether good spirit or bad, made no answer,. but instantly disappeared with a curious perfume, and a melodious twang.--Vide his Miscellanies, p. eighteen, as well as I can remember, and near the middle of the page.» « O, Monkbarns, man! do ye think every body as book-learned as yoursel?-but ye like to gar folk look like fools-ye can do that to Sir Arthur, and the minister his very sell.> << Nature has been before-hand with me, Grizel, both in these instances, and in another which shall be nameless;-but take a glass of ale, Grizel, and proceed with your story; for it waxes late.» " Jenny's just warming your bed, Monkbarns, and ye maun e'en wait till she's done.—Weel, I was at the search that our gudesire, Monkbarns that then was, made wi' auld Rab Tull's assistance; but ne'er be licket could they find that was to their purpose. And sae after they had touzled out mony a leather poke-full o' papers, the town-clerk had his drap punch at e'en to wash the dust out of his throat-we never were glass-breakers in this house, Mr Lovel-but the bodie had got sic a trick of sippling and tippling wi' the baillies and deacons when they met (which was amaist ilka night) concerning the common gude o' the burgh, that he couldna weel sleep without it-But his punch he gat, and to bed he gaed-and in the middle of the night he gat a fearfu' wakening!-he was never just himsel after it, and he was strucken wi' the dead palsy that very day four years—He thought, Mr Lovel, that he heard the curtains o' his bed fissil, and out he lookit, fancying, puir man, it might have been the cat-But he saw-God hae a care o' us, it gars my flesh aye creep, though I hae 'tauld the story twenty times-he saw a weel-fa'ard auld gentleman standing by his bedside, in the moonlight, in a queer-fashioned dress, wi' mony a button and a band-string about it, and that part o' his garments, which it does not become a leddy to particulareeze, was baith side and wide, and as mony plie o't as of ony Hamburgh skipper's-He had a beard too, and whiskers turned upwards on his upper-lip, as lang as Baudrons'-and mony mair particulars there were that Rab Tull tauld o', but they are forgotten now-it is an auld story-Aweel, Rab was a just-living man for a country writer-and he was less fear'd than maybe might just hae been expected-and he asked in the name o' goodness what the appari tion wanted—And the spirit answered in an unknown tongue.-Then Rab said he tried him wi' Erse, for he cam in his youth frae the Braes of Glenlivat-but it waḍna do-Aweel, in this strait, he bethought him of the twa or three words o' Latin that he used in making out the town's deeds, and he had nae sooner tried the spirit wi' that, than out cam sic a blatter o' Latin about his lugs, that poor Rab Tull, wha was nae great scholar, was clean overwhelmed. Odd, but he was a bauld body, and he minded the Latin name for the deed that he was wanting. It was something about a cart I fancy,. for the ghaist cried aye Carter, carter» " « Carta, you transformer of languages,» cried Oldbuck; «< if my ancestor had learned no other language in the other world, at least he would not forget the latinity for which he was so famous while in this.»> « Weel, weel, carta be it then, but they ca'd it carter that tell'd me the story-It cried aye carta, if sae be that it was carta, and made a sign to Rab to follow it. Rab Tull keepit a Highland heart, and bang'd out o' bed, and till some o' his readiest claes-and he did follow the thing up stairs and down stairs to the place we ca' the high dow-cot, (a sort of a little tower in the corner of the auld house, where there was a rickle o' useless boxes and trunks,) and there the ghaist gae Rab a kick wi' the tae foot, and a kick wi' the tother, to that very auld east-country tabernacle of a cabinet that my brother has standing beside his library table, and then disappeared like a fuff o' tobacco, leaving Rab in a very pitiful condition." « Tenues secessit in auras,» quoth Oldbuck, Marry, sir, mansit odor-But, sure enough, the deed was there found in a drawer of this forgotten repository, which contained many other curious old papers, now properly labelled and arranged, and which seem to have belonged to my ancestor, the first possessor of Monkbarns. The deed, thus strangely recovered, was the original Charter of Erection of the Abbey, Abbey Lands, and so forth, of Trotcosey, comprehending Monkbarns and others into a Lordship of Regality in favour of the first Earl of Glengibber, a favourite of James the Sixth. It is subscribed by the king at Westminster, the seventeenth day of January, A. D. one thousand six hundred and twelve-thirteen. It's not worth while to repeat the witnesses' names." << I would rather," said Lovel, with awakened curiosity, « I would rather hear your opinion of the way in which the deed was discovered.» Why, if I wanted a patron for my legend, I could find no less a one than Saint Augustin, who tells the story of a deceased person appearing to his son, when sued for a debt which had been paid, and directing him where to find the discharge. But I rather opine with Lord Bacon, who says that imagination is much a-kin to miracleworking faith. There was always some idle story of the room being haunted by the spirit of Al obrand Oldenbuck, my great-great-great-grandfather-it's a shame to the English language that we have not a less clumsy way of expressing a relationship, of which we have occasion to think and speak so frequently—he was a foreigner, and wore his national dress, of which tradition had preserved an accurate description; and indeed. there is a print of him, supposed to be by Reginald Elstracke, pulling the press with his own hand, as it works off the sheets of his scarce edition of the Augsburg Confession. He was a chemist, as well as a good mechanic, and either of these qualities in this country was at that time sufficient to constitute a white witch at least. This superstitious old writer had heard all this, and probably believed it, and in his sleep the image and idea of my ancestor recalled that of his cabinet, which, with the grateful attention to antiquities and the memory of our ancestors not unusually met with, had been pushed into the pigeon-house to be out of the way-Add a quantam sufficit of exaggeration, and you have a key to the whole mystery.» " « Oh, brother, brother! But Dr Heavysterne, brother whose sleep was so sore broken, that he declared he wadna pass another night in the Green Room to get all Monkbarns, so that Mary and I were forced to yield our». Why, Grizel, the doctor is a good, honest, pudding-headed German, of much merit in his own way, but fond of the mystical, like many of his countrymen. You and he had a traffic the |