conceal certain swelling emotions of dignity, insomuch, that, when the
carter had communicated his message to the usher, he added, that »Certainly the
Gudeman of St. Leonard's had some grand news to tell him, for he was as uplifted
as a midden-cock upon pattens.«
    Butler, it may readily be conceived, immediately obeyed the summons. He was
a plain character, in which worth and good sense and simplicity were the
principal ingredients; but love, on this occasion, gave him a certain degree of
address. He had received an intimation of the favour designed him by the Duke of
Argyle, with what feelings those only can conceive who have experienced a sudden
prospect of being raised to independence and respect from penury and toil. He
resolved, however, that the old man should retain all the consequence of being,
in his own opinion, the first to communicate the important intelligence. At the
same time, he also determined that in the expected conference he would permit
David Deans to expatiate at length upon the proposal, in all its bearings,
without irritating him either by interruption or contradiction. This last was
the most prudent plan he could have adopted; because, although there were many
doubts which David Deans could himself clear up to his own satisfaction, yet he
might have been by no means disposed to accept the solution of any other person;
and to engage him in an argument would have been certain to confirm him at once
and for ever in the opinion which Butler chanced to impugn.
    He received his friend with an appearance of important gravity, which real
misfortune had long compelled him to lay aside, and which belonged to those days
of awful authority in which he predominated over Widow Butler, and dictated the
mode of cultivating the crofts of Beersheba. He made known to Reuben, with great
prolixity, the prospect of his changing his present residence for the charge of
the Duke of Argyle's stock-farm in Dumbartonshire, and enumerated the various
advantages of the situation with obvious self-congratulation; but assured the
patient hearer, that nothing had so much moved him to acceptance, as the sense
that, by his skill in bestial, he could render the most important services to
his Grace the Duke of Argyle, to whom, »in the late unhappy circumstance« (here
a tear dimmed the sparkle of pride in the old man's eye), »he had been sae
muckle obliged.«
    »To put a rude Hielandman into sic a charge,« he continued, »what could be
expected but that he suld be sic a chiefest herdsman,