"A long story, my lord," said Captain Dalgetty, "is next to a good evening draught and a warm night-cap: the best shoeing horn for drawing on a sound sleep. And since your lordship is pleased to take the trouble to tell it, I shall rest your patient and obliged auditor."
"Anderson," said Lord Menteith, "and you, Sibbald, are dying to hear, I suppose, of this strange man too; and I believe I must indulge your curiosity, that you may know how to behave to him in time of need.—You had better step to the fire then."
Having thus assembled an audience about him, Lord Menteith sat down upon the edge of the four-posted bed, while Captain Dalgetty, wiping the relicks of the posset from his beard and mustachoes, and repeating the first verse of the Lutheran psalm, Alle guter geister loben den Herrn, &c. rolled himself into one of the places of repose, and, thrusting his shock pate from between the blankets, listened to Lord Men-
