"Forsooth! you are a proper man to start from the board, and turn your back on a guest thus," said Mersington. "Whistle a bar o' that oure again. "There was a clocker, it dabbit at a man, And he dee'd wi' fear, And he dee'd wi' fear----" "he--he, it seems to gie you as mickle comfort as the burnt sack." "Perdition, man!" exclaimed the other, wheeling so briskly round, that he startled his guest in the act of taking another long deep draught. "How can you jest with my distress? I tell thee, friend Mersington, if the lands of Bruntisfield and the Wrytes, on which I have built my hopes, slip through my fingers thus, I may yet come to the husks and the swine-trough, like the prodigal of old. Behold my manor of Drumsheugh on the brae yonder; for these ten years a puff of smoke hath not curled from its chimneys; the moss is on its hearths, and cobwebs obscure the gilding of its galleries and chambers: the long grass waves in the avenue as it doth in the stable-court, where my good and careful father mustered eighty troopers in jack and plate the night before Dunbar was fought and won by Cromwell. My ancient tower of Clermiston is in the same condition, and both are mortgaged to that prince of scribes and scoundrels, Grasper, the Writer in Mauchin's Close. This match with Holsterlee, too! S'blood! Juden says the mare is elfshotten, and our best jockies opine that I can never win against Holster's racers, which have won the city purse these five years consecutively." "As for the race--he, he! to be off wi' the Laird, swear your mare hath been bewitched, and burn some auld carlin in proof o't." "D--nation! I am a ruined and impoverished man!" "He, he! the auld gossips of Blackfriars' Wynd tell another story." "What do they say?" "That Clermistonlee can never come to want, as his friend the de'il has given him a braw purse, with moudieworts' feet on't, and sae lang as he preserves it, he shall never lack siller." "I wish to God he had! but where got ye this precious information?" "At the tea-board o' my Leddy Drumsturdy, nae further gane than yesterday." "Stuff and nonsense!" "I hope sae, for just sic a purse brought the learned Doctor Fian to stake in 1590. I've read the ditty against him--he, he! but to come to the swine-trough, that would be an unco pity, you have such a braw taste for getting up dinners and suppers, that his grace the gourmand o' Lauderdale was just naething to ye." "Say rather Juden Stenton, my ground baillie, major domo, squire of the body, and everything." "Then your burnt sack is just perfection; but alake! you now begin to see the end o' chambering, dicing, drinking, racing, and wantonness. And puir Alison Gifford--faith, you made her tocher flee fast enough!' "This admonitory tone becomes _thee_ well!" said Clermistonlee, with scornful emphasis; "and truly, thou art like one of Job's comforters."