The Waverley novels, by Sir Walter Scott, complete in 12 vol., printed from the latest English ed., embracing the author's last corrections, prefaces & notes.

344 WAVERLEY NOVELS.
soon as by any means they had compassed a new horse of somewhat superior
strength to that which had broken down the day before. However reasonable this practice appeared to the Laird of Dumbiedikes, he ought to have
observed, that it may be overdone, and that it infers, as a matter of course,
the destruction and loss of both horse, and cart, and loading. Even so it
befell when the additional " prestations " came to be demanded of Benjamin
Butler. A man of few words, and few ideas, but attached to Beersheba
with a feeling like that which a vegetable entertains to the spot in which
it chances to be planted, he neither remonstrated with the Laird, nor
endeavoured to escape from him, but, toiling night and day to accomplish
the terms of his task-master, fell into a burning fever and died. His
wife did not long survive him; and, as if it had been the fate of this
family to be left orphans, our Reuben Butler was, about the year7L04 -5,
left in the same circumstances in which his father had been placed, and under
the same guardianship, being that of his grandmother, the widow of Monk's
old trooper.
The same prospect of misery hung over the head of another tenant of this
hard-hearted lord of the soil. This was a tough true-blue Presbyterian,
called Deans, who, though most obnoxious to the Laird on account of principles in church and state, contrived to maintain his ground upon the estate
by regular payment of mail-duties, kain, arriage, carriage, dry multure,
lock, gowpen, and knaveship, and all the various exactions now commuted
for money, and summed up in the emphatic word RENT. But the years 1700
and 1701, long remembered in Scotland for dearth and general distress,
subdued the stout heart of the agricultural whig. Citations by the ground
officer, decreets of the Baron Court, sequestrations, poindings of outside and
inside plenishing, flew about his ears as fast as the tory bullets whistled
around those of the Covenanters at Pentland, Bothwell Brigg, or Airsmoss.
Struggle as he might, and he struggled gallantly, "Douce David Deans"
was routed horse and foot, and lay at the mercy of his grasping landlord
just at the time that Benjamin Butler died. The fate of each family was
anticipated; but they who prophesied their expulsion to beggary and ruin,
were disappointed by an accidental circumstance.
On the very term-day when their ejection should have taken place,-when
all their neighbours were prepared to pity, and not one to assist them, the
minister of the parish, as well as a doctor from Edinburgh, received a hasty
summons to attend the Laird of Dumbiedikes. Both were surprised, for his
contempt for both faculties had been pretty commonly his theme over an
extra bottle, that is to say, at least once every day. The leech for the soul,
and he for the body, alighted in the court of the little old manor-house at
almost the same time; and when they had gazed a moment at each other
with some surprise, they in the same breath expressed their conviction that
Dumbiedikes must needs be very ill indeed, since he summoned them both
to his presence at once. Ere the servant.could usher them to his apartment
the party was augmented by a man of law, Nichil Novit, writing himself
procurator before the Sheriff-court, for in those days there were no solicitors.
This latter personage was first summoned to the apartment of the Laird,
where, after some short space, the soul-curer and the body-curer were invited
to join him.
Dumbiedikes had been by this time transported into the best bed-room,
used only upon occasions of death and marriage, and called, from the
former of these occupations, the Dead-Room. There were in this apartment, besides the sick person himself and Mr. Novit, the son and heir of the
patient, a tall, gawky, silly-looking boy of fourteen or fifteen, and a housekeeper, a good buxom figure of a woman, betwixt forty and fifty, who had
kept the keys and managed matters at Dumbiedikes since the lady's death.
It was to these attendants that Dumbiedikes addressed himself pretty nearly
in the following words; temporal and spiritual matters, the care of his health