A personage evidently a divine, long visaged and dark featured, with his lanky sable hair falling on his Geneva bands and coat of rusty black, sat warming his spindle legs at the warm hearth, and smoking a long pipe, on the bowl of which he fixed his great lack lustre eyes with an expression of the deepest abstraction. It was the Reverend Mr. Ichabod Bummel, who came every evening as regularly as six o'clock struck, to smoke a pipe, and hear the passing news at the change-house kept by his aunt-in-law old Elsie, and to bore every traveller who was disposed to hear the abstruse theology and ponderous arguments advanced in his _Bombshell_, for that immortal work had been printed at last, in thick quarto, and a copy of it now lay under his elbow all ready for action against the first good-natured listener or fool-hardy disputant. In person this redoubtable champion of toleration was as lean as ever, though the goods and chattels of this world had flowed amply upon him of late, notwithstanding the oppression and famine of the time. He had cautiously purchased various tofts and pendicles on the banks of the Powburn, and to these he gave hard and unusual scriptural names, which they bear unto this day, and which the curious may find by consulting the City Directory. One he named the Land of Canaan, another the Land of Goshen, the Land of Egypt, Hebron, and so forth, while the little runnel that traverses them was exalted into the waters of Jordan. Meinie, whom he had espoused, had "proved," as he said, "ane fruitful vine," for she had brought him four sons, all long-visaged, hollow-eyed, and sepulchral counterparts of himself, and he named them Shem, Ham, Japhet, and Ichabod. On the opposite side of the ingle, and far back in a corner, a miserable-looking woman crouched on the stone bench for warmth. A tartan plaid was muffled about her shoulders, and half concealed her hollow cheeks and ghastly visage. She seemed a personification of the famine and misery that reigned so triumphantly in Scotland. Her eyes were full of unnatural lustre; they flashed like diamonds in the light of the fire, but had a scrutinizing and stern expression in them that startled Walter, and he felt uneasy in her vicinity. "It's only puir Beatrix Gilruth, my winsome gentleman," said Elsie in a low voice; "she is a gomeral--a natural body that bides about the doors, Sir; just a puir, harmless, daft creature. She'll no harm you, Sir." In the tumult of his mind Walter did not at first recognise either Elsie or Ichabod, but assuming an air of as much unconcern as he could muster, he called for a bicker of French wine, and took possession of a cutty stool which the slipshod Elsie placed for him hurriedly and officiously opposite the divine, who regarded him with a keen scrutinizing glance, to ascertain his probable station in life, his errand, and objects in coming hither. He saw that he was a traveller, and being on foot must be a poor one.