is struck up at the door; the stock and horn sounds lustily in the ears of her whose bottle is empty; and, obliged to send them away without either cake or sup, she hears sounding in her confused ears-- "The day will come when ye'll be dead. An' ye'll neither care for meal nor bread;" and, in a short time after, "Jamie the wight," an impling, with a tail of half-a-dozen minor and subordinate angels, begin blowing their smoking horns in at both door and window, till honest John is fairly smoked out, crying, as he hastens to the door--"This comes, Jenny, o' yer lavish kindness to yer cusins, that we hae naethin left in oor bottle, either to keep oot thae deevils' breath or wash't oot o' oor choking craigs." He is no sooner at the door than Geordie Jamieson accosts him in the usual style, and says he has come for his "hogmanay;" but John, knowing the state of the bottle, begins a loud cough, in the midst of the smoke, and cries, as he runs away from his house and visitor, (whom he pretends not to see for the smoke.) "It's a deevil o' a hardship to be smeeked oot o' ane's ain hoose." "Now," mutters Jenny, as she hears him run away, "I'll no see his face till mornin; an' he'll come in as blind's a bat." And out she flies to catch him; but, in her hurry, she overturns Geordie, just as his lips are manufacturing the ordinary "Guid e'en to ye, Jenny!" "The same to ye, Geordie," says she; and, with that boon, leaves him on her flight. The truth was, that John had the same instinctive antipathy against a house where there was an empty bottle as rats have against deserted granaries. But, if honest John Simson's house was deserted because Jenny had made too free with the bottle, Wat Webster's was full, from a reason precisely the very opposite; for the fair Marion--who had "Brankit fast and made her bonny"-- was, in the midst of a company, distributing the cakes and bannocks with maidenly grace; and many a swain that night was glad, while "He quhissilit and he pypit baith, To mak her blyth that meeting-- My hony heart, how says the sang, There sall be mirth at oor greeting."