O! Good, your worship, tell it of all things; for I mightily deligh OSTON LIERA IN TWO VOLUMES. VOL. I. SANCHO PANZA NEW-YORK: PRINTED BY J. & J. HARPER, 327 PEARL-STREET, 0. A. ROORBACH, AND WM. BURGESS. 1827. ELIZABETH DE BRUCE. CHAPTER I. THE WINDY WEDNESDAY. That night, a child might understand, BURNS. OLD persons in the midland counties of Scotland, will often, by the winter's fireside, on a stormy night, astonish the younkers by their talk of a day which they call "The Windy Wodensday." The exact date of this memorable day is not easily £xed—nor is it of much importance. It happened, however, when the year was in the wanewhen the gorgeous skies of autumn blacken into winter -when spitting and snell winds begin to whistle through leafless forests, and rave through chimney canns-when the citizens of the Old Town of Edinburgh hail once more shop windows sparkling o' nights, and welcome those cressets hung in the third heavens, which may be seen glancing cheerily from the high lattices that cluster round the imperial steeple of old St. Giles.-It was immediately after All Hallowday, the season when the douce burghers of Edinburgh having cleared scores with Heaven for the approaching winter, the godless generation of writers, from the Tweed to the Spey, were free to flock back once more to their towering homes in the Old, and then almost the only town. The wind held high mastery through the long evening; but towards midnight violent and scudding showers struggled with the hurricane; and, in an hour afterwards, the spirit of the blast was effectually cowed by heavy, rushing, downright rain. Among sundry other acts of grace, the amended weather. permitted two decent and responsible burghers of Edin burgh to quit, in rather comfortable trim, the snug harbourage of a well-frequented tavern of those days, situated near the City Cross, where, "high and dry," amid the coil of the elements, they had been celebrating an annual festival of the ancient and worshipful Incorporation of BAXTERS. It was now midnight, which the long-tongued bell of St. Giles loudly proclaimed, careless of the effect produced upon the startled ear of Deacon Daigh, the elder and graver citizen. The younger man was still of humour to boast of" chirping over his cups," and of "hearing the chimes at midnight. He was, moreover, still a bachelor. "Ten-eleven-twelve"-counted the worthy Deacon, halting and gravely turning up his ear. "Weel-be thankit, there's nae mair o' ye! Mrs. Daigh, our wife, now, will threep it's three o' the blessed morning, and this the week after the Town's Sacrament. Not that I'm an advocate for late hours, Mr. Burlin; but as the younger brethren saw it meet in the exercise o' a sound discretion to vote me into the chair, passing over many of the craft, forbye yoursel', Mr. Burlin, far maig thro' sic distinction, and far better qualified for discharging the duties of office, it behooved me to sit out the ploy jocosely, that decency might mingle with our mirth,-as weel as to gi'e countenance to you younger lads, or I would never have stirred abroad on sic a judgment-like night,—a night in which the windows o' Heaven are opened,”—[here the worthy Deacon lapsed into a fit of tipsy solemnity]-" the fountains o' the great deeps unsealed, and the Cowgate strand rumbling like the Canon-Mills water in a Lammas speat. This night-hawking is no my ordinary, Benjie ;I may use that familiarity wi' an auld 'prentice. It is kenned weel that David Daigh, or Deacon Daigh, as friends and weel-wishers are pleased to style me, has not for thirty years been three times out o' his bed after the Town-guard drum beat in at ten o'clock, except at an orra time like this same night, or when taking a chack o' supper, or a chappin o' ale and a pie in a customer's house, wi” a friend like yoursel'. No, Benjie,-frae the West Bow fit to the Watergate Port, I'm known for a man of a sober and steady walk, and—” But here the united craftsmen, who for sundry reasons felt that two are better than one," and were, accordingly. stuck fast, arm in arm, like two adhering three-pennies, came thundering down upon the resounding causeway. Let it not, however, be imagined, that this sudden loss of equilibrium proceeded from any internal cause. The younger man, indeed, maintained the perpendicular with judge-like decorum, and even opposed an adequate resistance to the less steady movements of his ancient master. But, besides the violence of the weather, and being embarrassed by the huge snuff-mull and other insignia and bearings of the craft, now returning to their annual slumber in the Deacon's parlour-bunker press, on entering that narrow dark defile, which in those days lay between the Luckenbooths and the low sheds, called Krames, which then stuck like barnacles to a seventy-four round the stately pile of St. Giles, some persons rapidly advancing in the dark, with a hasty, and probably inadvertent push, produced the above mentioned catastrophe. "What mean ye by this, sirs?" cried Master Burlin, angrily challenging the aggressors as he scrambled to his feet. "Ken ye, my masters, wha ye are pushing and jundying that ur By gate? Are ye hurt, Deacon ?" "Lord sake, Benjie, at the lang tongue o' ye!" earnestly whispered the still recumbent, but peace-pursuing Deacon. "I wad na for a Yule batch, or the langest score on my nick-sticks, (and that's the auld Leddy de Bruce's) ha'e my name bandied, or my word heard, in a causey bruilzie at this hour o' the night. Pass on, worthy gentlemen. There is nae ill done but might ha'e been waur. The strangers seemed disposed to make some apology; but the barm of Master Burlin's blood raged the higher for the soft answer of his companion. " but "Speak for yoursel', Deacon Daigh,” cried he ; I'll learn thae penny-page gentry how they come thud against 'sponsible men. Ken ye, my masters, wha ye speak to ?" Now, in the whole circle of categories, there is not perhaps one more injudicious, or more calculated to draw forth a saucy response than the above. "How should we know?" cried the former speaker, drawing himself up and crossing his arms on his breast "Some drunken mechanical rogue, who should have been snoring on his chaff-bed some five hours agone." |