The material part of us ought to keep growing gradually thinner, to let the soul out when its time comes, and the soul to keep growing bigger and stronger every day, until it bursts the body at length, as a growing nut does its shell; when, instead, the body grows thicker and thicker, lessening the room within, it squeezes the life out of the soul, and when such a man’s body dies, his soul is found a shrivelled thing, too poor to be a comfort to itself or to anybody else. Cosmo, to see that man drink, makes me ashamed of my tumbler of toddy. And now I think of it, I don’t believe it does me any good; and, just to make sure that I am in earnest, from this hour I will take no more.--Then,” he added, after a short pause, “I shall be pretty sure you will not take it.” “Oh, papa!” cried Cosmo, “take your toddy all the same: I promise you--and a Warlock will not break his word--never to taste strong drink while I live.” “I should prefer the word of a man to that of a Warlock,” said his father. “A Warlock is nothing except he be a man. Some Warlocks have been men.” From that day, I may here mention, the laird drank nothing but water, much to the pleasure of Peter Simon, who was from choice a water-drinker. “What a howling night it is, Cosmo!” he resumed. “If that poor old drinker had tried to get on to Howglen, he would have been frozen to death; when the drink is out of the drunkard, he has nothing to resist with.” By this time Lord Mergwain had had his supper, and had begun to drink again. Grizzie wanted to get rid of him, that she might “redd up” her kitchen. But he would not move. He was quite comfortable where he was, he said, and though it was the kitchen! he wouldn’t stir a peg till he had finished the magnum. My lady might go when she pleased; the magnum was better company than the whole houseful! Grizzie was on the point of losing her temper with him altogether, when the laird returned to the kitchen. He found her standing before him with her two hands on her two hips, and lingered a moment at the door to hear what she was saying. “Na, na, my lord!” expostulated Grizzie, “I canna lea’ ye here. Yer lordship’ll sune be past takin’ care o’ yersel--no ’at ye wad be a witch at it this present! Ye wad be thinkin’ ye was i’ yer bed whan ye was i’ the mids’ o’ the middin’, or pu’in’ the blankets o’ the denk dub ower yer heid! Lord! my lord, ye micht set the hoose o’ fire, an’ burn a’, baith stable an’ byre, an’ horses an’ cairts, an’ cairt-sheds, an’ hiz a’ to white aisse in oor nakit beds!” “Hold your outlandish gibberish,” returned his lordship. “Go and fetch me some whisky. This stuff is too cold to go to sleep on in such weather.”