Guy Mannering.

96 VWAERLEY NOVELS.
petty vexations, which answer all the purpose of disturbing their serenity; and every reader must have observed,
that neither natural apathy nor acquired philosophy can
render country gentlemen insensible to the grievances
which occur at elections, quarter-sessions, and meetings
of trustees.
Curious to investigate the manners of the country,
M[annering took the advantage of a pause in good Mr.
Bertram's string of stories, to inquire what Captain Hatteraick so earnestly wanted with the gipsy woman.
" Oh, to bless his ship, I suppose. You must know,
Mr. Mannering, that these free-traders, whom the law
calls smugglers, having no religion, make it all up in
superstition; and they have as many spells, and charms,
and nonsense'
"Vanity and waur! " said the Dominie: "it is a trafficking with the Evil One. Spells, periapts, and charms,
are of his device-choice arrows out of Apollyon's
quiver."
"' Hold your peace, Dominie-ye're speaking forever"
-(by the way, they were the first words the poor man
had uttered that morning, excepting that he said grace
and returned thanks)-" Mr. Mannering cannot get in a
word for ye!-And so, Mr. Mannering, talking of astronomy, and spells, and these matters, have ye been so
kind as to consider what we were speaking about last
night?"
"I begin to think, Mr. Bertram, with your worthy
friend here, that I have, been rather jesting with edgetools; and although neither you nor I, nor any sensible
man, can put fiaith in the predictions of astrology, yet as
it has sometimes happened that inquiries into futurity,
undertaken in jest, have in their results produced serious