 a lumbering noise, which proved to be the
advance of the expected vehicle, pressing forward with all the dispatch to which
the broken-winded jades that drew it could possibly be urged. With ineffable
pleasure, Mrs. Macleuchar saw her tormentor deposited in the leathern
convenience; but still, as it was driving off, his head thrust out of the window
reminded her, in words drowned amid the rumbling of the wheels, that, if the
diligence did not attain the Ferry in time to save the flood-tide, she, Mrs.
Macleuchar, should be held responsible for all the consequences that might
ensue.
    The coach had continued in motion for a mile or two before the stranger had
completely repossessed himself of his equanimity, as was manifested by the
doleful ejaculations, which he made from time to time, on the too great
probability, or even certainty, of their missing the flood-tide. By degrees,
however, his wrath subsided; he wiped his brows, relaxed his frown, and, undoing
the parcel in his hand, produced his folio, on which he gazed from time to time
with the knowing look of an amateur, admiring its height and condition, and
ascertaining, by a minute and individual inspection of each leaf, that the
volume was uninjured and entire from title-page to colophon. His
fellow-traveller took the liberty of inquiring the subject of his studies. He
lifted up his eyes with something of a sarcastic glance, as if he supposed the
young querist would not relish, or perhaps understand, his answer, and
pronounced the book to be Sandy Gordon's Itinerarium Septentrionale,1 a book
illustrative of the Roman remains in Scotland. The querist, unappalled by this
learned title, proceeded to put several questions, which indicated that he had
made good use of a good education, and, although not possessed of minute
information on the subject of antiquities, had yet acquaintance enough with the
classics to render him an interested and intelligent auditor when they were
enlarged upon. The elder traveller, observing with pleasure the capacity of his
temporary companion to understand and answer him, plunged, nothing loath, into a
sea of discussion concerning urns, vases, votive altars, Roman camps, and the
rules of castrametation.
    The pleasure of this discourse had such a dulcifying tendency, that,
although two causes of delay occurred, each of much more serious duration than
that which had drawn down his wrath upon the unlucky Mrs. Macleuchar, our
ANTIQUARY only bestowed on the delay the honour of a few episodical poohs and
pshaws, which rather seemed to regard the interruption of his disquisition
