in this way: "Hic-hoc-wheew!" It was most profoundly ludicrous;
and could not have missed exciting risibility in anyone save a
pious, a disappointed, and humbled bride.

The good dame wept bitterly. She could not for her life go and
awaken the monster, and request him to make room for her: but
she retired somewhere, for the laird, on awaking next morning,
found that he was still lying alone. His sleep had been of the
deepest and most genuine sort; and, all the time that it lasted, he
had never once thought of either wives, children, or sweethearts,
save in the way of dreaming about them; but, as his
spirit began again by slow degrees to verge towards the
boundaries of reason, it became lighter and more buoyant from
the effects of deep repose, and his dreams partook of that
buoyancy, yea, to a degree hardly expressible. He dreamed of the
reel, the jig, the strathspey, and the corant; and the elasticity of
his frame was such that he was bounding over the heads of
maidens, and making his feet skimmer against the ceiling,
enjoying, the while, the most ecstatic emotions. These grew too
fervent for the shackles of the drowsy god to restrain. The nasal
bugle ceased its prolonged sounds in one moment, and a sort of
hectic laugh took its place. "Keep it going--play up, you devils!"
cried the laird, without changing his position on the pillow. But
this exertion to hold the fiddlers at their work fairly awakened the
delighted dreamer, and, though he could not refrain from
continuing, his laugh, beat length, by tracing out a regular chain
of facts, came to be sensible of his real situation. "Rabina, where
are you? What's become of you, my dear?" cried the laird. But
there was no voice nor anyone that answered or regarded. He
flung open the curtains, thinking to find her still on her knees, as