"That's may-be no sae canny to tell," said the precentor, with solemnity.
Upon being urged, however, to speak out, he preluded with two or three large puffs of tobacco-smoke, and out of the cloudy sanctuary which these whiffs formed around him, delivered the following legend, having cleared his voice with one or two hems, and imitating, as near as he could, the eloquence which weekly thundered over his head from the pulpit.
"What we are now to deliver, my brethren,—hem,—I mean, my good friends,—was not done in a corner, and may serve as an answer to witch-advocates, atheists, and misbelievers of all kinds.—Ye must know that the worshipful Laird of Ellangowan was not so preceese as he might have been in clearing his land of witches, (concerning whom it is said, 'Thou shalt not suffer a witch to live,') nor of those who had familiar spirits, and consulted with divination and sorcery, and lots, which is the fashion with the Egyptians,
