Page:Tales of my landlord (Volume 2).djvu/235

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OLD MORTALITY.
227

Tower of Tillietudlem was heartily at his service and that of his attendants.

Serjeant Bothwell did not fail to take the lady at her word, and readily forgot the height from which his family had descended, in a joyous carousal, during which Mr Harrison exerted himself to produce the best wine in the cellar, and to excite his guest to be merry by that seducing example, which, in matters of conviviality, goes farther than precept. Old Gudyill associated himself with a party so much to his taste, pretty much as Davy in the Second Part of Henry the Fourth mingles in the revels of his master, Justice Shallow. He ran down to the cellar at the risk of breaking his neck, to ransack some private catacomb, known, as he boasted, only to himself, and which never either had, or should, during his superintendance, render forth a bottle of its contents to any one but a real king's friend.

"When the Duke dined here," said the butler, seating himself at a distance from