No, thank you." "I did not propose to read aloud, my lord--only to myself." "Oh! That alters the matter! That I would by no means object to.

I am but poor company!" The laird got his "Journal," and was soon lost in the communion of a kindred soul.
By and by, the boat of his lordship's brain was again drifting towards the side of such imagination as was in him.

The half-tide restoring the physical mean was past, and intoxication was setting in.

He began to cast uneasy glances towards the book the laird was reading.

The old folio had a look of venerable significance about it, and whether it called up some association of childhood, concerned in some fearful fancy, or dreamfully he dreaded the necromancer's art, suggested by late experience, made him uneasy.
"What's that you are reading ?" he said at length.