"Yes, my lord," answered Oldbuck, "upon occasion of an excursion hither from Knockwinnock—and since we are upon a subject so melancholy, you may perhaps remember whose taste supplied these lines from Chaucer, which now form the motto of the tapestry." "I guess", said the Earl, "though I cannot recollect. She excelled me, indeed, in literary taste and information, as in everything else; and it is one of the mysterious dispensations of Providence, Mr. Oldbuck, that a creature so excellent in mind and body should have been cut off in so miserable a manner, merely from her having formed a fatal attachment to such a wretch as I am." Mr. Oldbuck did not attempt an answer to this burst of the grief which lay ever nearest to the heart of his guest, but, pressing Lord Glenallan's hand with one of his own, and drawing the other across his shaggy eyelashes, as if to brush away a mist that intercepted his sight, he left the Earl at liberty to arrange himself previous to dinner. CHAPTER FOURTEENTH —Life, with you, Glows in the brain and dances in the arteries; 'Tis like the wine some joyous guest hath quaffed, That glads the heart and elevates the fancy: Mine is the poor residuum of the cup, Vapid, and dull, and tasteless, only soiling, With its base dregs, the vessel that contains it. Old Play. "Now, only think what a man my brother is, Mr. Blattergowl, for a wise man and a learned man, to bring this Yerl into our house without speaking a word to a body! And there's the distress of thae Mucklebackits—we canna get a fin o' fish—and we hae nae time to send ower to Fairport for beef, and the mutton's but new killed—and that silly fliskmahoy, Jenny Rintherout, has taen the exies, and done naething but laugh and greet, the skirl at the tail o' the guffaw, for twa days successfully—and now we maun ask that strange man, that's as grand and as grave as the Yerl himsell, to stand at the sideboard! and I canna gang into the kitchen to direct onything, for he's hovering there, making some pousowdie* for my Lord, for he doesna eat like ither folk neither—And how to sort the strange servant man at dinner time—I am sure, Mr. Blattergowl, a'thegither, it passes my judgment." * Pousowdie,—Miscellaneous mess. "Truly, Miss Griselda," replied the divine, "Monkbarns was inconsiderate. He should have taen a day to see the invitation, as they do wi' the titular's condescendence in the process of valuation and sale. But the great man could not have come on a sudden to ony house in this parish where he could have been better served with vivers—that I must say— and also that the steam from the kitchen is very gratifying to my nostrils;—and if ye have ony household affairs to attend to, Mrs. Griselda, never make a stranger of me—I can amuse mysell very weel with the larger copy of Erskine's Institutes."