jolly landlord, he was so overwhelmed with the exertion of punch-compounding, that he took off the short-tailed snuff-coloured coat which he usually wore, and went to work in his shirt-sleeves, slicing lemons, mixing, strengthening, sweetening--ay, and tasting too--until his pleasant face, always round and red, assumed a greater rotundity and an extra glow, and his little, short, fat body ached again with fatigue. But, as is very often the case in better society than that with which we are now engaged, the amount of conversation indulged in had not been in equal ratio with the amount of liquor consumed. They were very quiet drinkers in those parts, and on great occasions sat round the council fire as silently and gravely as a set of aboriginal Indians. They had touched lightly on the subject of the wedding, but only as men who knew that they had an interminable subject at hand, ready to fall back upon whenever they felt disposed, and from that they had jumped at a tangent to discussing the chances of the lambing season, where they were far more at home, and much more practical in what they had to say. The fertility of Farmer Gardner's ewes, or the carelessness of Tom Howson, Farmer Jeffrey's shepherd, were topics which went home to every man present; on which each had a distinct opinion, which he delivered with far greater force and emphasis than when called upon to pronounce upon an analysis of the guiding motives of the human heart in connection with the choice of a husband. Indeed, so much had to be said upon the subject of these "yows," that the conversation began to become rather tiresome to some members of the company, who were also tenants of the bridegroom's, but whose business connections were rather with commerce than agriculture or stock-purchase. These gentry, who would have sat interested for that indefinite period known as "a blue moon," had the talk been of markets, and prices, and "quotations," at length thought it time to vary the intellectual repast, and one of them suggested that somebody should sing a song. In itself not a bad proposition, but one always hard to be properly carried out. A dead silence fell upon the company at once, broken by Farmer Whicher, who declared he had often heard neighbour Croke "wobble like a lavrock," and moved that neighbour Croke be at once called upon. Called upon Mr. Croke was unanimously, but being a man of uncertain temper he nearly spoiled the harmony of the evening by declaring flatly that he would be "darnged" if he would. A bookkeeper in one of the Brocksopp mills, a young man of literary tendencies, who had erected several _in memoriam_ tombstones to his own genius in the _Brocksopp Banner and County Chronicle_, then proposed that Mr. M'Shaw, who, as the speaker remarked, "came from the land which produced the inspired exciseman," would favour them with a Scotch ballad. But Mr. M'Shaw declined the compliment. A thrifty man,