recover, got out of the house, and was laid on the feather-bed in
the garden. However, he never got the better of that night, and
before Whitsunday he was dead too, and buried beside his sister's
bones at the south side of the kirkyard dyke, where his cousin's
son, that was his heir, erected the handsome monument, with the
three urns and weeping cherubims, bearing witness to the great
valour of the Major among the Hindoos, as well as other commendable
virtues, for which, as the epitaph says, he was universally esteemed
and beloved, by all who knew him, in his public and private
capacity.

But although the burning of the Breadland-House was justly called
the great calamity, on account of what happened to Miss Girzie with
her gold watch and silver teapot; yet, as Providence never fails to
bring good out of evil, it turned out a catastrophe that proved
advantageous to the parish; for the laird, instead of thinking to
build it up, was advised to let the policy out as a farm, and the
tack was taken by Mr Coulter, than whom there had been no such man
in the agriculturing line among us before, not even excepting Mr
Kibbock of the Gorbyholm, my father-in-law that was. Of the
stabling, Mr Coulter made a comfortable dwelling-house; and having
rugget out the evergreens and other unprofitable plants, saving the
twa ancient yew-trees which the near-begaun Major and his sister had
left to go to ruin about the mansion-house, he turned all to
production, and it was wonderful what an increase he made the land
bring forth. He was from far beyond Edinburgh, and had got his
insight among the Lothian farmers, so that he knew what crop should
follow another, and nothing could surpass the regularity of his rigs
and furrows.--Well do I remember the admiration that I had, when, in
a fine sunny morning of the first spring after he took the