"The fient a supper I'll get there-- A _dish o' tongues_ is a' she'll gie me! She'll shake her nieve and rug her hair, An' wonder how she e'er gaed wi' me! She vows to leave me, an' I say, 'Gang, gang! for dearsake!--that's a blessin'!' She rins to get her claes away, But--_o' the kist the key's amissin!_ "The younkers a' set up a skirl, They shriek an' cry--'O dinna, mither!' I slip to bed, and fash the quarrel Neither ae way nor anither. Bet creeps beside me unco dour, I clap her back, an' say--'My dawtie!' Quo' she--'Weel, weel, my passion's ower, But dinna gang a-drinkin', Watty.'" "Bravo, Scotchy!" shouted one. "Your health and song, Mr Brown," cried another. Adam's head began to swim--the lights danced before his eyes--he fell from his chair. One of his friends called a hackney coach; and, half insensible of where he was, he was conveyed to his lodgings. It was afternoon on the following day before he appeared at the counting-house, and his eyes were red, and he had the languid look of one who has spent a night in revelry. That night he was again prevailed upon to accompany his brother-clerks to the club-room, "just," as they expressed it, "to have one bottle to put all right." That night he again heard the words--"_We'll have another_," and again he yielded to their seduction. But we will not follow him through the steps and through the snares by which he departed from virtue and became entangled in vice. He became an almost nightly frequenter of the tavern, the theatre, or both, and his habits opened up temptations to grosser viciousness. Still he kept up a correspondence with Mary Douglas, the gentle object of his young affections, and for a time her endeared remembrance haunted him like a protecting angel, whispering in his ear and saving him from depravity. But his religious principles were already forgotten; and, when that cord was snapped asunder, the fibre of affection that twined around his heart did not long hold him in the path of virtue. As the influence of company grew upon him, her remembrance lost its power, and Adam Brown plunged headlong into all the pleasures and temptations of the metropolis. Still he was attentive to business--he still retained the confidence of his employer--his salary was liberal--he still sent thirty pounds a-year to his mother; and Mary Douglas yet held a place in his heart, though he was changed--fatally changed. He had been about four years in his situation when he obtained leave for a few weeks to visit his native village. It was on a summer afternoon when a chaise from Jedburgh drove up to the door of the only public-house in the village. A fashionably dressed young man alighted, and, in an affected voice, desired the landlord to send a porter with his luggage to Mrs Brown's. "A porter, sir?" said the innkeeper--"there's naething o' the kind in the toun; but I'll get twa callants to tak' it alang."