him, he wadna see the puir folk trodden down this gait.'
Meanwhile, this general good opinion never prevented their taking
advantage of him on all possible occasions, turning their cattle
into his parks, stealing his wood, shooting his game, and so
forth, 'for the Laird, honest man, he'll never find it; he never
minds what a puir body does.' Pedlars, gipsies, tinkers, vagrants
of all descriptions, roosted about his outhouses, or harboured in
his kitchen; and the Laird, who was 'nae nice body,' but a
thorough gossip, like most weak men, found recompense for his
hospitality in the pleasure of questioning them on the news of the
country side.

A circumstance arrested Ellangowan's progress on the highroad to
ruin. This was his marriage with a lady who had a portion of about
four thousand pounds. Nobody in the neighbourhood could conceive
why she married him and endowed him with her wealth, unless
because he had a tall, handsome figure, a good set of features, a
genteel address, and the most perfect good-humour. It might be
some additional consideration, that she was herself at the
reflecting age of twenty-eight, and had no near relations to
control her actions or choice.

It was in this lady's behalf (confined for the first time after
her marriage) that the speedy and active express, mentioned by the
old dame of the cottage, had been despatched to Kippletringan on
the night of Mannering's arrival.

Though we have said so much of the Laird himself, it still remains
that we make the reader in some degree acquainted with his
companion. This was Abel Sampson, commonly called, from his