Page:Scott - Tales of my Landlord - 3rd series, vol. 2 - 1819.djvu/86

76 advice on this occasion; but as I do not go to Ravenswood to seek a bride, dead or alive, I hope I shall chuse a better stable for my horse than the Kelpie's quick-sand, and especially as I have always had a particular dread of it since the patrole of dragoons were lost there ten years since. My father and I saw them from the tower struggling against the advancing tide, and they were lost long before any help could reach them."

"And they deserved it weel, the southern loons," said Caleb; "what had they ado capering on our sands, and hindering a wheen honest folk frae bringing on shore a drap brandy? I hae seen them that busy, that I wad hae fired the auld culverin, or the demisaker that's on the south bartizan at them, only 1 was feared they might burst in the ganging off."

Caleb's brain was now fully engaged with abuse of the English soldiery and excisemen, so that his master found no great difficulty in escaping from him and