Such was the tiresome small talk with which those "hunger and cold beaten soldiers" (to use a camp phrase of the day) maintained a cross-fire at table, and it differed very little from what one may hear in a similarly constituted party of the present day. The younger members of the company, whose whole experience of war had been confined to repelling a foray on the Highland frontier, a brawl in a whig district, or a review on the links of Leith before Sir Thomas Dalyel, his grace the Lord High Commissioner, and the ladies of his mimic court, were somewhat more peaceable in the tenor of their conversation, which went not beyond a duel at St. Anne's Yard or in Hugh Blairs, the Leith races (where yesterday the long pending match between Jack Holster's horse and Clermistonlee's mare had ended in the defeat of the latter), of Reid the mountebank, and the feats of his famous "tumbling lassie" at the Tennis Court Theatre, where they had all been the preceding night to behold "The Soldier's Fortune" by the celebrated Otway, for whom they had a fellow-feeling, as he had lately been a cornet of dragoons in Flanders. The merits of the new-fashioned iron hat-piece covered with velvet, which the English were now substituting for the old helmet, were warmly discussed. Mistress Annie Laurie, Jean Gordon, Lady Dunbarton, and other fair belles, new tawny beavers, silver-hilted swords, horses and wines, and various frivolities were all descanted upon, while the bright wine flowed and the laughter increased apace. Dinner was over, and the vast wilderness of viands had undergone a great and melancholy change; the collared pigs were minus heads and legs; the great platters of turkeys, geese, and ducks, stewed hares and fricasseed rabbits, the lordly baron and the knightly sirloin, and everything else were in the same plight; while the noble Castle of Tangier had been completely sacked, demolished, and its garrison of baked and spiced cardinals, capuchins, and fan tails given up to the conquerors. The servants cleared the polished tables, and one placed before Gibbie, the host, a great chased silver tankard, the pride of his heart, for it was the production of George Heriot. It was mantling with purple port, and Gibbie (whose orb-like visage, by eating and drinking, was flushed like the setting October sun), laid his hand upon the cup, and looked round the board with his great saucer eyes to see that every guest's horn was filled; for the toast he was about to propose was, "The health of His Sacred Majesty James VII., with peace at home, and war and confusion to his enemies abroad." Gibbie, we say, with a rubicund visage beaming with loyalty and hospitality, had just upheaved his ponderous bulk for this purpose, when the rapid and ominous clatter of hoofs in the inn-yard attracted the attention of all; and the reverend Doctor Joram exclaimed,