Many of the roads in that country lay along the sea-beach, and were liable to be flooded by the tides, which rise with great height, and advance with extreme rapidity.

Others were intersected with creeks and small inlets, which it was only safe to pass at particular times of the tide.

Neither circumstance would have suited a dark night, a fatigued horse, and a traveller ignorant of his road.
Mannering resolved, therefore, definitively to halt for the night at the first inhabited place, however poor, he might chance to reach, unless he could procure a guide to this unlucky village of Kippletringan.
A miserable hut gave him an opportunity to execute his purpose.

He found out the door with no small difficulty, and for some time knocked without producing any other answer than a duet between a female and a cur-dog, the latter yelping as if he would have barked his heart out, the other screaming in chorus.

By degrees the human tones predominated; but the angry bark of the cur being at the instant changed into a howl, it is probable something more than fair strength of lungs had contributed to the ascendency.
'Sorrow be in your thrapple then!' these were the first articulate words, 'will ye no let me hear what the man wants, wi' your yaffing ?' 'Am I far from Kippletringan, good dame ?' 'Frae Kippletringan!!!' in an exalted tone of wonder, which we can but faintly express by three points of admiration.