'No wonder that my countryman has celebrated the merits of a Scotch breakfast,' said I, upon seeing the splendour and abundance of the morning repast at Castle Eredine. The linen and china were exquisitely delicate; and the table, though loaded with a plenty approaching to profusion, was arranged with perfect order and neatness. Eredine, for so I found it was the custom to call Mr Graham, having placed me in a sturdy, square-built, elbow-chair, with a back lofty and solid enough to serve every purpose of a screen, began to heap before me all the variety of food within his reach. In vain did I remonstrate. The ceremonial of hospitality required that I should be urged even unto loathing. When I turned to supplicate my host for quarter, and hoped that he was inclined to relent, an old lady, who sat by me on the other side, assailed me in the unguarded moment with a new charge of ham and marmalade. 'Ah! if he had seen the breakfasts in my young days!' said Eredine, in answer to my comment. 'A Glen Eredine breakfast was something substantial then. It was not children's food that bred the fellows who fought at Prestonpans.' 'What could you possibly have, sir, that is wanting here?' The chieftain smiled compassionately upon me, as on a representative of the sons of little men. 'Why, strong venison soup,' said he, 'and potted ptarmigans; or, if we were a hunting, a roasted salmon:--hunters are not nice, you know.' As soon as we rose from table, Charlotte went to resume her office of housekeeper, which had, in her absence, been most zealously filled by one of her innumerable cousins. To associate me in this employment was one of the friendly arts by which Charlotte contrived to domesticate me at Eredine; and household affairs furnished some little occupation for us both, although the establishment at the Castle was then smaller than it had ever been from time immemorial.