A bright idea then occurred, that Colonel Mannering might have employed some other person in the transaction; he would not have wasted a moment's thought upon the want of confidence in himself which such a manoeuvre would have evinced.

But this hope also was groundless.

After a solemn pause, Mr.Glossin offered the upset price for the lands and barony of Ellangowan.

No reply was made, and no competitor appeared; so, after a lapse of the usual interval by the running of a sand-glass, upon the intended purchaser entering the proper sureties, Mr.Mac-Morlan was obliged, in technical terms, to 'find and declare the sale lawfully completed, and to prefer the said Gilbert Glossin as the purchaser of the said lands and estate.' The honest writer refused to partake of a splendid entertainment with which Gilbert Glossin, Esquire, now of Ellangowan, treated the rest of the company, and returned home in huge bitterness of spirit, which he vented in complaints against the fickleness and caprice of these Indian nabobs, who never knew what they would be at for ten days together.

Fortune generously determined to take the blame upon herself, and cut off even this vent of Mac-Morlan's resentment.
An express arrived about six o'clock at night, 'very particularly drunk,' the maid-servant said, with a packet from Colonel Mannering, dated four days back, at a town about a hundred miles' distance from Kippletringan, containing full powers to Mr.Mac-Morlan, or any one whom he might employ, to make the intended purchase, and stating that some family business of consequence called the Colonel himself to Westmoreland, where a letter would find him, addressed to the care of Arthur Mervyn, Esq., of Mervyn Hall.
Mac-Morlan, in the transports of his wrath, flung the power of attorney at the head of the innocent maidservant, and was only forcibly withheld from horse-whipping the rascally messenger by whose sloth and drunkenness the disappointment had taken place..