The stout and athletic form of Maggie herself, bustling here and there among a pack of half-grown girls and younger children, of whom she chucked one now here and another now there, with an exclamation of "Get out o' the gate, ye little sorrow!" was strongly contrasted with the passive and half-stupified look and manner of her husband's mother, a woman advanced to the last stage of human life, who was seated in her wonted chair close by the fire, the warmth of which she coveted, yet hardly seemed to be sensible of--now muttering to herself, now smiling vacantly to the children as they pulled the strings of her toy or close cap, or twitched her blue checked apron.

With her distaff in her bosom, and her spindle in her hand, she plied lazily and mechanically the old-fashioned Scottish thrift, according to the old-fashioned Scottish manner.

The younger children, crawling among the feet of the elder, watched the progress of grannies spindle as it twisted, and now and then ventured to interrupt its progress as it danced upon the floor in those vagaries which the more regulated spinning-wheel has now so universally superseded, that even the fated Princess in the fairy tale might roam through all Scotland without the risk of piercing her hand with a spindle, and dying of the wound.

Late as the hour was (and it was long past midnight), the whole family were still on foot, and far from proposing to go to bed; the dame was still busy broiling car-cakes on the girdle, and the elder girl, the half-naked mermaid elsewhere commemorated, was preparing a pile of Findhorn haddocks (that is, haddocks smoked with green wood), to be eaten along with these relishing provisions.
While they were thus employed, a slight tap at the door, accompanied with the question, "Are ye up yet, sirs ?" announced a visitor.

The answer, "Ay, ay,--come your ways ben, hinny," occasioned the lifting of the latch, and Jenny Rintherout, the female domestic of our Antiquary, made her appearance.
"Ay, ay," exclaimed the mistress of the family--"Hegh, sirs! can this be you, Jenny ?--a sight o' you's gude for sair een, lass." "O woman, we've been sae ta'en up wi' Captain Hector's wound up by, that I havena had my fit out ower the door this fortnight; but he's better now, and auld Caxon sleeps in his room in case he wanted onything.