He greeted us with great joviality. "A good day to you, my masters," he cried; "and God send you the ease which you love. Here have I been bearing the heat and burden of the day, all in order that lazy folk should have carp to eat when they wish it. Gad, I am tired and wet and dirty, this last beyond expression. For Heaven’s sake, Master Wishart, take me where I may clean myself." The host led the fisherman away, and soon he returned, spruce and smiling once more. He sat down heavily on a seat beside me. "Now, Master Burnet," says he, "you must not think it unworthy of a learned Grecian to follow the sport of the angle, for did not the most famous of their writers praise it, not to speak of the example of the Apostles?" I tried hard to think if this were true. "Homer, at any rate," I urged, "had no great opinion of fish and their catchers, though that was the worse for Homer, for I am an angler myself, and can understand your likings." "Then I will have your hand on it," said he, "and may Homer go to the devil. But Theocritus and Oppian, ay, even Plato, mention it without disrespect, and does not Horace himself say ’Piscemur’? Surely we have authority." But this was all the taste I had of my preceptor’s conversation, for he had been walking all day in miry ways, and his limbs were tired: nor was I surprised to see his head soon sink forward on his breast; and in a trice he was sleeping the sleep of the just and labouring man. And now we were joined by a newcomer, no less than Mistress Kate Wishart, as pretty a lass as you will see in a day’s journey. She had been nurtured by her father amid an aroma of learning, and, truly, for a maid, she was wondrous learned, and would dispute and cite instances with a fine grace and a skill which astonished all. To me, who am country-bred and a trifle over-fastidious, she seemed a thought pedantic and proud of her knowledge; but what is hateful in a hard-featured woman is to be pardoned in a fresh lass. Her father brought me to her and presented me, which she acknowledged with a courtsey which became her mightily; but I spoke not two words to her, for the old man led me away down one of the alleys among the trees. "Kate’ll look after thae auld dotterels," said he, speaking in the broadest Scots; "I brocht her out that I micht get a word wi’ ye my lane, for I’m fair deein’ for news frae the auld country. First of a’, how is Saunders Blackett at Peebles? Him and me were aince weel acquant." And when I had told him, he ran off into a string of inquiries about many folk whom I knew, and whom he once had known, which I answered according to my ability. "And now," he says, "I’ve bidden twa-three o’ the officers o’ the Scots brigade to supper the nicht, so ye’ll see some guid Scots physiogs after thae fosy Dutchmen. Ye’ll maybe ken some o’ them."