“Aweel, since sae it is, and I can only sleep in ae barn at ance, I’ll gae down with Saunders Mucklebackit--he has aye a soup o’ something comfortable about his begging--and, bairns, I’ll maybe live to put ilka ane o’ ye in mind some ither night that ye hae promised me quarters and my awmous;” and away he went with the fisherman. Oldbuck laid the band of strong possession on Lovel--“Deil a stride ye’s go to Fairport this night, young man--you must go home with me to Monkbarns. Why, man, you have been a hero--a perfect Sir William Wallace, by all accounts. Come, my good lad, take hold of my arm;--I am not a prime support in such a wind--but Caxon shall help us out--Here, you old idiot, come on the other side of me.--And how the deil got you down to that infernal Bessy’s-apron, as they call it? Bess, said they? Why, curse her, she has spread out that vile pennon or banner of womankind, like all the rest of her sex, to allure her votaries to death and headlong ruin.” “I have been pretty well accustomed to climbing, and I have long observed fowlers practise that pass down the cliff.” “But how, in the name of all that is wonderful, came you to discover the danger of the pettish Baronet and his far more deserving daughter?” “I saw them from the verge of the precipice.” “From the verge!--umph--And what possessed you dumosa pendere procul de rupe?--though dumosa is not the appropriate epithet--what the deil, man, tempted ye to the verge of the craig?” “Why--I like to see the gathering and growling of a coming storm--or, in your own classical language, Mr. Oldbuck, suave mari magno--and so forth--but here we reach the turn to Fairport. I must wish you good-night.” “Not a step, not a pace, not an inch, not a shathmont, as I may say,--the meaning of which word has puzzled many that think themselves antiquaries. I am clear we should read salmon-length for shathmont’s-length. You are aware that the space allotted for the passage of a salmon through a dam, dike, or weir, by statute, is the length within which a full-grown pig can turn himself round. Now I have a scheme to prove, that, as terrestrial objects were thus appealed to for ascertaining submarine measurement, so it must be supposed that the productions of the water were established as gauges of the extent of land.--Shathmont--salmont--you see the close alliance of the sounds; dropping out two h’s, and a t, and assuming an l, makes the whole difference--I wish to heaven no antiquarian derivation had demanded heavier concessions.” “But, my dear sir, I really must go home--I am wet to the skin.”