"But if you will trust to me, I will bring up a friend on your part from the Well, who, though you have hardly seen him before, will settle matters for you as well as if you had been intimate for twenty years--and I will bring up the Doctor too, if I can get him unloosed from the petticoat of that fat widow Blower, that he has strung himself upon." "I have no doubt you will do every thing with perfect accuracy, Captain.
At one o'clock, then, we meet at the Buck-stane--Stay, permit me to see you to the door." "By Cot! and it is not altogether so unnecessary," said the Captain; "for the tamned woman with the besom might have some advantage in that long dark passage, knowing the ground better than I do--tamn her, I will have amends on her, if there be whipping-post, or ducking-stool, or a pair of stocks in the parish!" And so saying, the Captain trudged off, his spirits ever and anon agitated by recollection of the causeless aggression of Meg Dods, and again composed to a state of happy serenity by the recollection of the agreeable arrangement which he had made between Mr.Tyrrel, and his friend Sir Bingo Binks.
We have heard of men of undoubted benevolence of character and disposition, whose principal delight was to see a miserable criminal, degraded alike by his previous crimes, and the sentence which he had incurred, conclude a vicious and wretched life, by an ignominious and painful death.

It was some such inconsistency of character which induced honest Captain MacTurk, who had really been a meritorious officer, and was a good-natured, honourable, and well-intentioned man, to place his chief delight in setting his friends by the ears, and then acting as umpire in the dangerous rencontres, which, according to his code of honour, were absolutely necessary to restore peace and cordiality.

We leave the explanation of such anomalies to the labours of craniologists, for they seem to defy all the researches of the Ethic philosopher.
FOOTNOTE: [I-18] A kettle of fish is a _fete-champetre_ of a particular kind, which is to other _fetes-champetres_ what the piscatory eclogues of Brown or Sannazario are to pastoral poetry.

A large caldron is boiled by the side of a salmon river, containing a quantity of water, thickened with salt to the consistence of brine.

In this the fish is plunged when taken, and eaten by the company _fronde super viridi_.