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.

454 WAVERLEY NOVELS.
me tak on to be his servant, I am confident I Bad be a clean contrary creature; and I hope your honour will think on what I am saying, if ye were
ance fairly delivered out o' this house of bondage, and just take me to be your
ain wally-de-shamble."
" My valet, Cuddie?" answered Morton- "alas! that would be sorry preferment, even if we were at liberty."
"I ken what ye're thinking - that because I am landward bred, I wad
be bringing ye to disgrace afore folk. But ye maun ken I'm gey gleg at
the uptak; there was never onything dune wi' hand but I learned gey
readily,'septiug reading, writing, and ciphering; but there's no the like o'
me at the fitba', and I can play wi' the broadsword as weel as Corporal
Inglis there. I hae broken his head or now, for as massy as he's riding
ahint us.-And then ye'll no be gaun to stay in this country?"- said he,
stopping and interrupting himself.
" Probably not," replied Morton.
"Weel, I carena a boddle. Ye see I wad get my mither bestowed wi' her
auld graning tittie, auntie Meg in the Gallowgate o' Glasgow, and then I
trust they wad neither burn her for a witch, or let her fail for fau't o' fude,
or hang her up for an auld whig wife; for the provost, they say, is very
regardfu' o' sic puir bodies. And then you and me wad gang andl-pouss
our fortunes, like the folk i' the daft auld tales about Jock the Giant-killer
and Valentine and Orson: and we wad come back to merry Scotland, as the
sang says, and I wad tak to the stilts again, and turn sic furs on the bonny
rigs o' Milnwood hoelmns, that it wad be worth a pint but to look at them."
" I fear," said Morton, " there is very little chance, my good friend Cuddie,
of our getting back to our old occupation."
"Hout, stir, - hout, stir," replied Cuddie, "it's aye gude to keep up a
hardy heart —as broken a ship's come to land. Butwhat's that I hear?
never stir, if my auld mither isna at the preaching again! I ken the sough
o' her texts, that sound just like the wind blawing through the spence; and
there's Kettledrummle setting to wark, too —Lordsake, if the sodgers anes
get angry, they'll murder them baith, and us for company!"
Their fuirther conversation was in fact interrupted by a blatant noise
which rose behind them, in which the voice of the preacher emitted, in
unison with that of the old woman, tones like the grumble of a bassoon
combined with the screaking of a cracked fiddle. At first the aged pair of
sufferers had been contented to condole with each other in smothered expressions of complaint and indignation; but the sense of their injuries became
more pungently aggravated as they communicated with each other, and they
became at length unable to suppress their ire.
"Woe! woe! and a threefold woe unto you, ye bloody and violent persecutors!" exclaimed the Reverend Gabriel Kettledrumlule-" Woe! and
threefold woe unto you, even to the breaking of seals, the blowing of trumpets, and the pouring forth of vials."
"Ay -ay -a black cast to a' their ill-fa'ur'd faces, and the outside o'
the loof to them at the last day!" echoed the shrill counter-tenor of Mause,
falling in like the second part of a catch.
" I tell you," continued the divine, " that your rankings and your ridings
- your neighings and your prancings - your bloody, barbarous, and inhuman cruelties-your benumbing, deadening, and debauching the conscience
of poor creatures by oaths, soul-damning and self-contradictory, have arisen
from earth to Heaven like a foul and hideous outcry of perjury for hastening the wrath to come - hugh-! hugh! hugh!"
" And I say," cried Mause, in the same tune, and nearly at the same time,
"that wi' this auld breath o' mine, and it's sair taen down wi' the asthmatics
and this rough trot""Deil gin. they would gallop," said Cuddie, " wad it but gar her haud her
tongue!"