"Never saw them, nor heard o' them," replied David, with great coolness.
"Ta! nonsense, man!" said Jenny, with impatient credulity. "And did ye no come and seek anither? and did ye no come three or four times to the window?"
"Naething o' the kind," replied David, briefly, but with the same calmness and composure as before. "I never got a bottle o' ale and a basket o' bread frae ye oot o' that window; I never sought anither frae ye; and I hae been only ance at that window this blessed nicht."
There was nae resistin belief to a disclaimer sae coolly, sae calmly, and sae pointedly made; and Jenny acknowledged this by immediately exclaimin, in the utmost dismay and alarm—
"Lord preserve me, then! wha was't that got them, and whar are they?"
Her queries were instantly answered.
"It was me that got them, Jenny; and they're owre in yon corner yonder," said the minister, in a loud whisper, and now thrustin his head oot o' the window.
Jenny looked up for an instant in horror, uttered a loud scream, and fled. David looked up, too, for a second, and then set after her as fast as he could birr; leavin the facetious, but worthy minister in convulsions o' laughter.
"And that, my freends," here said the merry landlord, "is the story o' the minister o' Kirkfodden and his servant lass, as tauld to me by my guid freend, Andrew, here"—laying his hand kindly on the shoulder of the person he alluded to. The narrator was rewarded for his story, or rather for his manner of telling it—for in this art he excelled—by a continued roar of laughter from his auditory. When this had subsided—
"Come now," he said, "put in yer glasses. The best story's no the waur o' a weetin. It looks as weel again through a glass o' toddy."