St Ronan's Well Author:Walter Sir Scott Purchase of this book includes free trial access to www.million-books.com where you can read more than a million books for free. This is an OCR edition with typos. Excerpt from book: CHAPTER II. THE GUEST. Qu!b nmiis hie hospes? Dido apud Viryitium. Ch'am-maid - The Oemman in the front parlour! Boots's free Transtation of Ike M... more »iuid. It was on a fme summer's day that a solitary traveller rode under the old-fashioned archway, and alighted in the courtyard of Meg Dods's inn, and delivered the bridle of his horse to the humpbacked postilion. " Bring my saddle-bags," he said, " into the house—or stay—I am abler, I think, to carry them than you." He then assisted the poor meagre groom to unbuckle the straps which secured the humble and now despised convenience, and meantime gave strict charges that his horse should be unbridled, and put into a clean and comfortable stall, the girths slacked, and a cloth cast over his loins; but that tha saddle should not be removed until he himself came to see him dressed. The companion of his travels seemed in the hostler's eye deserving of his care, being a strong active horse, fit either for the road or field, but rather high in bone from a long journey; though from the state of his skin it appeared the utmost care had been bestowed to keep him in condition. While the groom obeyed the stranger's directions, the latter, with the saddle-bags laid over his arm, entered the kitchen of the inn. Here he found the landlady herself in none of her most blessed humours. The cook-maid was abroad on some errand, and Meg, in a close review of the kitchen apparatus, was making the unpleasant discovery, that trenchers had been broken or cracked, pots and saucepans not so accurately scoured as her precise notions of cleanliness required, which, joined to other detections of a more petty description, stirredher bile in no small degree; so that while she disarranged and arranged the blnk, she maundered, in an under tone, co...« less