 see that very picture" (pointing to the full-length portrait of Miss Vernon's grandfather) "walking by moonlight in the garden! I tauld your honour I was fleyed wi' a bogle that night, but ye wadna listen to me—I aye thought there was witchcraft and deevilry amang the Papishers, but I ne'er saw't wi' bodily een till that awfu' night."
"Get along, sir," said I, "and bring the fellows you talk of; and see they have more sense than yourself, and are not frightened at their own shadow."
"I hae been counted as gude a man as my neighbours ere now," said Andrew, petulantly; "but I dinna pretend to deal wi' evil spirits." And so he made his exit, as Wardlaw the land-steward made his appearance.
He was a man of sense and honesty, without whose careful management my uncle would have found it difficult to have maintained himself a housekeeper so long as he did. He examined the nature of my right of possession carefully, and admitted it candidly. To any one else the succession would have been a poor one, so much was the land encumbered with debt and mortgage. Most of these, however, were already vested in my father's person, and he was in a train of acquiring the rest; his large gains by the recent rise of the funds having made it a matter of ease and convenience for him to pay off the debt which affected his patrimony.
I transacted much necessary business with Mr. Wardlaw, and detained him to dine with me. We preferred taking our repast in the library, although Syddall strongly recommended our removing to the stone-hall, which he had put in order for the occasion. Meantime Andrew made his appearance with his true-blue recruits, whom he recommended in the highest terms, as "sober decent men, weel founded in doctrinal points, and, above all, as bold as lions." I ordered them something to drink, and they left the room. I observed old Syddall shake his head as they went out, and insisted upon knowing the reason.
"I maybe cannot expect," he said, "that your honour should put confidence in what I say, but it is Heaven's truth for all that—Ambrose Wingfield is as honest a man as lives, but if there is a false knave in the country, it is his brother Lancie;—the whole country knows him to be a spy for Clerk Jobson on the poor gentlemen that have been in trouble—But
