sat on the prow, answered every shout with a long, loud, and melancholy
howl. The deep sandbank of Carsethorn was expected to arrest the career
of these desperate navigators; but they passed, with the celerity of
water-fowl, over an obstruction which had wrecked many pretty ships.

"Old men shook their heads and departed, saying, 'We have seen the fiend
sailing in a bottomless ship; let us go home and pray;' but one young and
wilful man said, 'Fiend! I'll warrant it's nae fiend, but douce Janet
Withershins the witch, holding a carouse with some of her Cumberland
cummers, and mickle red wine will be spilt atween them. Dod I would
gladly have a toothfu'! I'll warrant it's nane o' your cauld sour slae-
water like a bottle of Bailie Skrinkie's port, but right
drap-o'-my-heart's-blood stuff, that would waken a body out of their last
linen. I wonder where the cummers will anchor their craft?' 'And I'll
vow,' said another rustic, 'the wine they quaff is none of your visionary
drink, such as a drouthie body has dished out to his lips in a dream; nor
is it shadowy and unsubstantial, like the vessels they sail in, which are
made out of a cockel-shell or a cast-off slipper, or the paring of a
seaman's right thumb-nail. I once got a hansel out of a witch's quaigh
myself--auld Marion Mathers, of Dustiefoot, whom they tried to bury in
the old kirkyard of Dunscore; but the cummer raise as fast as they laid
her down, and naewhere else would she lie but in the bonnie green
kirkyard of Kier, among douce and sponsible fowk. So I'll vow that the
wine of a witch's cup is as fell liquor as ever did a kindly turn to a
poor man's heart; and be they fiends, or be they witches, if they have
red wine asteer, I'll risk a drouket sark for ae glorious tout on't."

"'Silence, ye sinners,' said the minister's son of a neighbouring parish,
who united in his own person his father's lack of devotion with his
mother's love of liquor. 'Whist!--speak as if ye had the fear of