And then my gudesire, wha was failed in his limbs, but not in his judgement or memory--at least nothing to speak of--was obliged to tell the real narrative to his friends, for the credit of his good name.

He might else have been charged for a warlock.

[See Note 3.] The shades of evening were growing thicker around us as my conductor finished his long narrative with this moral--'Ye see, birkie, it is nae chancy thing to tak a stranger traveller for a guide, when you are in an uncouth land.' 'I should not have made that inference,' said I.'Your grandfather's adventure was fortunate for himself, whom it saved from ruin and distress; and fortunate for his landlord also, whom it prevented from committing a gross act of injustice.' 'Aye, but they had baith to sup the sauce o't sooner or later,' said Wandering Willie--'what was fristed wasna forgiven.

Sir John died before he was much over three-score; and it was just like of a moment's illness.

And for my gudesire, though he departed in fullness of life, yet there was my father, a yauld man of forty-five, fell down betwixt the stilts of his pleugh, and rase never again, and left nae bairn but me, a puir sightless, fatherless, motherless creature, could neither work nor want.