"I'll warrant is there--a dozen of them!" said Meg, with alacrity--for she could by no means endure to think on the accumulation of dignity likely to accrue to the rival establishment, from its becoming the residence of an actual nobleman. "I'll warrant he'll prove a landlouping lord on their hand, and they will be e'en cheap o' the loss--And he has come down out of order it's like, and nae doubt he'll no be lang there before he will recover his health, for the credit of the Spaw." "Faith, madam, his present disorder is one which the Spaw will hardly cure--he is shot in the shoulder with a pistol-bullet--a robbery attempted, it seems--that is one of your new accomplishments--no such thing happened in Scotland in my time--men would have sooner expected to meet with the phoenix than with a highwayman." "And where did this happen, if you please, sir?" asked the man of bills. "Somewhere near the old village," replied the stranger; "and, if I am rightly informed, on Wednesday last." "This explains your twa shots, I am thinking, Mrs. Dods," said Mr. Bindloose; "your groom heard them on the Wednesday--it must have been this attack on the stranger nobleman." "Maybe it was, and maybe it was not," said Mrs. Dods; "but I'll see gude reason before I give up my ain judgment in that case.--I wad like to ken if this gentleman," she added, returning to the subject from which Mr. Touchwood's interesting conversation had for a few minutes diverted her thoughts, "has heard aught of Mr. Tirl?" "If you mean the person to whom this paper relates," said the stranger, taking a printed handbill from his pocket, "I heard of little else--the whole place rang of him, till I was almost as sick of Tyrrel as William Rufus was. Some idiotical quarrel which he had engaged in, and which he had not fought out, as their wisdom thought he should have done, was the principal cause of censure. That is another folly now, which has gained ground among you. Formerly, two old proud lairds, or cadets of good family, perhaps, quarrelled, and had a rencontre, or fought a duel after the fashion of their old Gothic ancestors; but men who had no grandfathers never dreamt of such folly--And here the folk denounce a trumpery dauber of canvass, for such I understand to be this hero's occupation, as if he were a field-officer, who made valour his profession; and who, if you deprived him of his honour, was like to be deprived of his bread at the same time.--Ha, ha, ha! it reminds one of Don Quixote, who took his neighbour, Samson Carrasco, for a knight-errant." The perusal of this paper, which contained the notes formerly laid before the reader, containing the statement of Sir Bingo, and the censure which the company at the Well had thought fit to pass upon his affair with Mr. Tyrrel, induced Mr. Bindloose to say to Mrs. Dods, with as little exultation on the superiority of his own judgment as human nature would permit,--