Travellers, save when, during the herring season, an occasional fish-curer comes the way, rarely bait at the Gardenstone inn; and in the little low-browed room, with its windows in the thatch, into which, as her best, the land-lady ushered me, I certainly found nothing to identify the _locale_ with that chosen by the literary lawyer for his open library. But, according to Ferguson, though "learning was scant, provision was good;" and I dined sumptuously on an immense platter of fried flounders. There was a little bit of cold pork added to the fare; but, aware from previous experience of the pisciverous habits of the swine of a fishing village, I did what I knew the defunct pig must have very frequently done before me,--satisfied a keenly-whetted appetite on fish exclusively. I need hardly remind the reader that Lord Gardenstone's inn was not that of Gardenstone, but that of Laurence-kirk,--the thriving village which it was the special ambition of this law-lord of the last century to create; and which, did it produce only its famed snuff-boxes, with the invisible hinges, would be rather a more valuable boon to the country than that secured to it by those law-lords of our own days, who at one fell blow disestablished the national religion of Scotland, and broke off the only handle by which their friends the politicians could hope to _manage_ the country's old vigorous Presbyterianism. Meanwhile it was becoming apparent that the man with the apron had as shrewdly anticipated the character of the coming night as if he had been soberer. The sun, ere its setting, disappeared in a thick leaden haze, which enveloped the whole heavens; and twilight seemed posting on to night a full hour before its time. I settled a very moderate bill, and set off under the cliffs at a round pace, in the hope of scaling the hill, and gaining the high road atop which leads to Macduff, ere the darkness closed. I had, however, miscalculated my distance; I, besides, lost some little time in the opening of the deep ravine to which I have already referred as that in which possibly the fish-beds may be found cropping out; and I had got but a little beyond the gray ecclesiastical ruin, with its lonely burying-ground, when the tempest broke and the night fell.