THE THIRSTY WITCHES OF FRASERBURGH.

Near the ancient town of Fraserburgh, in the North of Scotland, there flourished during the reign of James III. a landed proprietor called Neil Badenoch, more commonly styled Ardlaw, from the name of his estate. This worthy had only two failings calling for special mention.

In the first place, his curiosity was so itching and unsatiable, that to learn a secret, however trifling and unimportant it might be, he was willing to run any risk, and put himself to the most signal inconvenience. Many a time, and oft did he regret that he had not become a priest, in order that he might have been privileged to hear confessions. Nay, it was currently reported that he actually would have assumed the sacerdotal vows and

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habit in his riper years, had an unlucky accident not intervened.

Passing through Fraserburgh one evening, his attention was arrested by certain wrathful sounds proceeding from the domicile of a tailor. Desirous to expiscate the cause of the "difficulty," he put his eye to the key-hole of the door, when he discovered the fabricator of raiment kneeling before his helpmate, who was administering to her lord de jure, though not de facto, a curtain lecture, enforced at intervals with a practical application of the tongs. The outreness of the sight caused Neil to titter, and the snyder waxing cognizant of the risible sound became suddenly impregnated with courage, and starting up from his ignoble position made a stealthy inquisition into the matter. Suspecting shrewdly that the domestic treason had been viewed by some eaves-dropper, and all the windows of the establishment being closed, the indignant fraction jumped at once to a correct solution of the problem. Heating, accordingly, one of his longest and sharpest needles, he suddenly thrust it through the keyhole. A loud and bitter yell was the upshot, and Ardlaw rushed from the unlucky messuage with only one eye to guide his homeward steps. Thus mutilated, mother Church, as a matter of course, would have nothing to say

to the monops, and the confessional was closed against him, for ever and a day, as a listener.

The second frailty which characterised our hero was one which, perchance, is not yet utterly extinct upon earth.

Without being what severe moralists would call a sot, Neil Badenoch never scrupled to own his decided preference for strong cordials, over the less exhilarating fluid which tradition indicates as the sober beverage of our primary ancestor. A stoup of generous and maturely aged wine, possessed attractions in his eyes, (or rather, we should say, his eye,) scarcely inferior in zest to a morsel of fresh gossip. He even went the length of selecting as his tutelar saint the mitre-adorned blacksmith, Dunstan, because the image of that Baalblistering tenant of the calendar resembled, in its rotund proportions, the artistic adumbrations of Bacchus.

In the close vicinage of the bibulous and inquisitive Laird of Ardlaw, there resided an elderly dame, touching whom rumour had many mysterious things to whisper. It was said, inter alia, that strange, unwholesome-looking customers frequented the mansion, and that lights had been seen burning in the apartments thereof, when all honest people ought to have been snoring in bed. This latter circumstance would not, perhaps, have been so

noteworthy, but for the fact that Lady Sproul (as she was "captioned") made a perennial boast of never seeing company, or either giving or receiving invitations to saturnalian re-unions. Altogether there was something pestilently mouldy about her reputation; and matters were not bettered by the fact that she had not manifested herself at mass within the memory of "the oldest inhabitant."

It can readily be imagined that honest Neil was continually on thorns, to find out if there was anything more than common in the walk and conversation of the anomalous matron. For years he tried to gain admittance to her dwelling by various extemporized pretexts; sometimes calling to make inquisition regarding the health of his worthy neighbour, and at others seeking to get in at the back door, on the plea that he wanted to see the shape of the spit as a pattern. All in vain, however, were the dodges of the thirster after knowledge; the bow-legged blackamoor, who was the only servitor in the establishment, ever managing to render abortive his best laid schemes.

Accident at length enabled the solely tantalized Neil, to quench to the uttermost the craving drought of his curiosity.

Being out after "elder's hours," on one mirk Allhallow Even, when there was neither moon nor star in the "lift," he noticed a number of persons, both male and female, stealing singly into the tenement which he so sorely wished to explore. Each one was enveloped in a flowing green mantle, capacious enough to conceal the wearer from head to foot; and the possession of this garment seemed to insure instant and unquestioned admission to all who were decored with the same.

A bright thought struck the ingenious Badenoch. Posting home hot foot, he hunted up a cloak of cognate pattern and complexion to those draperies which appeared to win such favor in the Sproul establishment, erstwhile the property of his deceased grandmother. Wrapt up in this toga he sought the tabooed mansion, knocked, and obtained ingress without any interrogatory, pertinent or impertinent, being propounded for his solution.

Following a guest who had entered at the same time as himself, the venturous Laird ascended a steep turnpike stair, and speedily stood in a large chamber, which was profusely replenished with company.

Such a "gousty" and weird-looking scene as there was presented to his ken, he never witnessed before or after.