What say you ?--in the language of the world and worldlings base, if you can condescend to so mean a sphere, shall we stay or go ?" "In the language of selfishness, then, which is of course the language of the world--let us go by all means." "Amen, amen, quo' the Earl Marshall," answered Oldbuck, as he exchanged his slippers for a pair of stout walking shoes, with cutikins, as he called them, of black cloth.

He only interrupted the walk by a slight deviation to the tomb of John o' the Girnel, remembered as the last bailiff of the abbey who had resided at Monkbarns.

Beneath an old oak-tree upon a hillock, sloping pleasantly to the south, and catching a distant view of the sea over two or three rich enclosures, and the Mussel-crag, lay a moss-grown stone, and, in memory of the departed worthy, it bore an inscription, of which, as Mr.Oldbuck affirmed (though many doubted), the defaced characters could be distinctly traced to the following effect:-- Here lyeth John o' ye Girnell; Erth has ye nit, and heuen ye kirnell.
In hys tyme ilk wyfe's hennis clokit, Ilka gud mannis herth wi' bairnis was stokit.
He deled a boll o' bear in firlottis fyve, Four for ye halie kirke, and ane for puir mennis wyvis.
"You see how modest the author of this sepulchral commendation was;--he tells us that honest John could make five firlots, or quarters, as you would say, out of the boll, instead of four,--that he gave the fifth to the wives of the parish, and accounted for the other four to the abbot and CHAPTER--that in his time the wives' hens always laid eggs--and devil thank them, if they got one-fifth of the abbey rents; and that honest men's hearths were never unblest with offspring--an addition to the miracle, which they, as well as I, must have considered as perfectly unaccountable.

But come on--leave we Jock o' the Girnel, and let us jog on to the yellow sands, where the sea, like a repulsed enemy, is now retreating from the ground on which he gave us battle last night." Thus saying, he led the way to the sands.

Upon the links or downs close to them, were seen four or five huts inhabited by fishers, whose boats, drawn high upon the beach, lent the odoriferous vapours of pitch melting under a burning sun, to contend with those of the offals of fish and other nuisances usually collected round Scottish cottages.