would be destroyed; whereupon he accorded to go with me, and we
walked at a lively course to the spot, and the people from all
quarters were pouring in, and it was an awsome scene. But the
burning of the house, and the droves of the multitude, were nothing
to what we saw when we got forenent the place. There was the
rafters crackling, the flames raging, the servants running, some
with bedding, some with looking-glasses, and others with chamber
utensils as little likely to be fuel to the fire, but all
testifications to the confusion and alarm. Then there was a shout,
"Whar's Miss Girzie? whar's the Major?" The Major, poor man, soon
cast up, lying upon a feather-bed, ill with his complaints, in the
garden; but Lady Skimmilk was nowhere to be found. At last, a
figure was seen in the upper flat, pursued by the flames, and that
was Miss Girzie. Oh! it was a terrible sight to look at her in that
jeopardy at the window, with her gold watch in the one hand and the
silver teapot in the other, skreighing like desperation for a ladder
and help. But, before a ladder or help could be found, the floor
sunk down, and the roof fell in, and poor Miss Girzie, with her
idols, perished in the burning. It was a dreadful business! I
think, to this hour, how I saw her at the window, how the fire came
in behind her, and claught her like a fiery Belzebub, and bore her
into perdition before our eyes. The next morning the atomy of the
body was found among the rubbish, with a piece of metal in what had
been each of its hands, no doubt the gold watch and the silver
teapot. Such was the end of Miss Girzie; and the Breadland, which
the young laird, my pupil that was, by growing a resident at
Edinburgh, never rebuilt. It was burnt to the very ground; nothing
was spared but what the servants in the first flaught gathered up in
a hurry and ran with; but no one could tell how the Major, who was
then, as it was thought by the faculty, past the power of nature to