CHAPTER FOURTH.
The pawkie auld carle cam ower the lea, Wi' mony good-e'ens and good-morrows to me, Saying, Kind Sir, for your courtesy, Will ye lodge a silly puir man?
The Gaberlunzie Man.
Our two friends moved through a little orchard, where the aged apple-trees, well loaded with fruit, showed, as is usual in the neighbourhood of monastic buildings, that the days of the monks had not always been spent in indolence, but often dedicated to horticulture and gardening.

Mr.Oldbuck failed not to make Lovel remark, that the planters of those days were possessed of the modern secret of preventing the roots of the fruit-trees from penetrating the till, and compelling them to spread in a lateral direction, by placing paving-stones beneath the trees when first planted, so as to interpose between their fibres and the subsoil.

"This old fellow," he said, "which was blown down last summer, and still, though half reclined on the ground, is covered with fruit, has been, as you may see, accommodated with such a barrier between his roots and the unkindly till.

That other tree has a story:--the fruit is called the Abbot's Apple; the lady of a neighbouring baron was so fond of it, that she would often pay a visit to Monkbarns, to have the pleasure of gathering it from the tree.

The husband, a jealous man, belike, suspected that a taste so nearly resembling that of Mother Eve prognosticated a similar fall.