the burns, and was a kind of walking chronicle throughout the valleys
of the Tweed, the Ettrick, and the Yarrow; carrying the gossip from
house to house, commenting on the inhabitants and their concerns, and
never hesitating to give them a dry rub as to any of their faults or
follies.

A shrewd beggar like Andrew Gemmells, Scott added, who could sing the
old Scotch airs, tell stories and traditions, and gossip away the long
winter evenings, was by no means an unwelcome visitor at a lonely manse
or cottage. The children would run to welcome him, and place his stool
in a warm corner of the ingle nook, and the old folks would receive him
as a privileged guest.

As to Andrew, he looked upon them all as a parson does upon his
parishioners, and considered the alms he received as much his due as
the other does his tithes. "I rather think," added Scott, "Andrew
considered himself more of a gentleman than those who toiled for a
living, and that he secretly looked down upon the painstaking peasants
that fed and sheltered him."

He had derived his aristocratical notions in some degree from being
admitted occasionally to a precarious sociability with some of the
small country gentry, who were sometimes in want of company to help
while away the time. With these Andrew would now and then play at cards
and dice, and he never lacked "siller in pouch" to stake on a game,
which he did with a perfect air of a man to whom money was a matter of
little moment, and no one could lose his money with more gentlemanlike
coolness.

Among those who occasionally admitted him to this familiarity, was old