He
looked excessively heavy and stupid when he was _fou_, but
he was never out o' gude humour."
One of the stories of that time will illustrate better the wilder days
of Scott's youth than any comment:--
"On reaching one evening," says Mr. Lockhart, "some
Charlieshope or other (I forget the name) among those
wildernesses, they found a kindly reception as usual: but to
their agreeable surprise, after some days of hard living, a
measured and orderly hospitality as respected liquor. Soon
after supper, at which a bottle of elderberry wine alone had
been produced, a young student of divinity who happened to
be in the house was called upon to take the 'big ha' Bible,'
in the good old fashion of Burns' Saturday Night: and some
progress had been already made in the service, when the good
man of the farm, whose 'tendency,' as Mr. Mitchell says,
'was soporific,' scandalized his wife and the dominie by
starting suddenly from his knees, and rubbing his eyes, with
a stentorian exclamation of 'By ----! here's the keg at
last!' and in tumbled, as he spake the word, a couple of
sturdy herdsmen, whom, on hearing, a day before, of the
advocate's approaching visit, he had despatched to a certain
smuggler's haunt at some considerable distance in quest of a
supply of _run_ brandy from the Solway frith.
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