I've seen him in a' moods in these jaunts, grave and gay, daft and serious, sober and drunk--( this, however, even in our wildest rambles, was but rare)--but drunk or sober he was aye the gentleman.

He looked excessively heavy and stupid when he was _fou_, but he was never out o' gude humour." One of the stories of that time will illustrate better the wilder days of Scott's youth than any comment:-- "On reaching one evening," says Mr.Lockhart, "some Charlieshope or other (I forget the name) among those wildernesses, they found a kindly reception as usual: but to their agreeable surprise, after some days of hard living, a measured and orderly hospitality as respected liquor.

Soon after supper, at which a bottle of elderberry wine alone had been produced, a young student of divinity who happened to be in the house was called upon to take the 'big ha' Bible,' in the good old fashion of Burns' Saturday Night: and some progress had been already made in the service, when the good man of the farm, whose 'tendency,' as Mr.Mitchell says, 'was soporific,' scandalized his wife and the dominie by starting suddenly from his knees, and rubbing his eyes, with a stentorian exclamation of 'By -- --! here's the keg at last!' and in tumbled, as he spake the word, a couple of sturdy herdsmen, whom, on hearing, a day before, of the advocate's approaching visit, he had despatched to a certain smuggler's haunt at some considerable distance in quest of a supply of _run_ brandy from the Solway frith.

The pious 'exercise' of the household was hopelessly interrupted.

With a thousand apologies for his hitherto shabby entertainment, this jolly Elliot or Armstrong had the welcome _keg_ mounted on the table without a moment's delay, and gentle and simple, not forgetting the dominie, continued carousing about it until daylight streamed in upon the party.