It was necessary he should find some one with whom old acknowledged greatness should weigh more than recent independence, and to whom his application might appear an act of high dignity, relenting at once and soothing.

But he could not recollect an inhabitant of a mind so constructed.

"Our kail is like to be cauld eneugh too," he reflected, as the chorus of "Cauld Kail in Aberdeen" again reached his ears.

The minister--he had got his presentation from the late lord, but they had quarrelled about teinds; the brewster's wife--she had trusted long, and the bill was aye scored up, and unless the dignity of the family should actually require it, it would be a sin to distress a widow woman.
None was so able--but, on the other hand, none was likely to be less willing--to stand his friend upon the present occasion, than Gibbie Girder, the man of tubs and barrels already mentioned, who had headed the insurrection in the matter of the egg and butter subsidy.

"But a' comes o' taking folk on the right side, I trow," quoted Caleb to himself; "and I had ance the ill hap to say he was but a Johnny New-come in our town, and the carle bore the family an ill-will ever since.
But he married a bonny young quean, Jean Lightbody, auld Lightbody's daughter, him that was in the steading of Loup-the-Dyke; and auld Lightbody was married himsell to Marion, that was about my lady in the family forty years syne.