Mr. Davidson was, however, more fortunate in his companions. After his misfortune, they induced him to open a house of entertainment at Ancrum Bridge; laid in for him a stock of wines, spirits, etc.; made parties at his house; and set him fairly a-going. This was a line in which he was calculated both to shine and to realize profit. His company was still as attractive as ever; and it was no longer disgraceful to receive a solid reward for the entertainment which his facetiousness could afford. Having also learned a little wisdom from his former miscarriages, he proceeded with more caution, kept up the respectability of his house, was polite and amusing to his guests, and, above all, paid infinite attention to his business.
The peculiarity of character, for which we have placed his name against that of Caleb Balderstone, here occurs. Whenever there alighted any stranger of a more splendid appearance than ordinary, he was suddenly seized with a fit of magniloquency, and, in the identical manner of Caleb Balderstone, would call Hostler No. 10 down from Hay-loft No. 15, to conduct the gentleman’s “beast” to one of the best stalls in the Stable No. 20! He would then, with a superabundance of ceremony, show the stranger into a chamber which he would declare with the greatest assurance to be No. 40; and on his guest asking perhaps for a glass of rum, would order a waiter, whom he baptized (nolens volens) No. 15 for the occasion, to draw it from the cask in the bar marked 95. Then was the twelfth hen-roost to be ransacked, and a glorious fowl, the best that could be selected from a stock of about one thousand or so, to be consigned to the hands of the Head Cook herself, (God knows his house boasted only one, who was Scullion and Boots besides.) All this rhodomontade was enacted in a style of such serious effrontery, and was accompanied by such a volubility of talk, and flights of humour, and bustling activity, that any one not previously acquainted with his devices, would have given him and his house credit for ten times the size and respectability they could actually boast of.
Mr. Davidson afterwards removed to the inn at Middleton, where he died, in good circumstances, about sixteen years ago. He was a man of very brilliant talents, distinguished much by that faculty entitled by the country people ready wit. He had a strong memory, a lively and fertile imagination, and possessed powers of discourse truly astonishing. The prevailing tone of his mind was disposed to ridicule. He had a singularly felicitous knack of giving anything improper in his own conduct or appearance a bias in his favour, and could at all times, as we have seen, set off his own circumstances in such a light as made them splendid and respectable, though in reality they were vulgar and undignified.
CHAPTER IX.
Legend of Montrose.
(Plot of the Tale.)
here can be little doubt that the Author of “Waverley” has taken the grounds of this Tale from the following interesting story, related in a critique on the “Culloden Papers,” in the Quarterly Review, which is said to have been written by the Great Novelist’s other self, Sir Walter Scott.
“The family or sept of Macgregor is of genuine Celtic origin, great antiquity, and, in Churchill’s phrase,
‘doubtless springs