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318 free access to take an extract; and"—He proceeded to lock up the repositories of the deceased with more speed than he had opened them—"Mrs Rebecca, ye'll be so kind as to keep all right here until we can let the house—I had an offer this morning, if such a thing should be, and if I was to have any management."

Our friend Dinmont, having had his hopes as well as another, had hitherto sate sulky enough in the arm-chair formerly appropriated to the deceased, and in which she would have been not a little scandalized to have seen this colossal specimen of the masculine gender lolling at length. His employment had been rolling up, into the form of a coiled snake, the long lash of his horse-whip, and then letting it uncoil itself into the middle of the floor.—The first words he said when he had digested the shock, contained a magnanimous declaration, which he probably was not conscious of having uttered aloud—"Weel—blood's thicker than water—she's