``Jenny's just warming your bed, Monkbarns, and ye maun e'en wait till she's done.--Weel, I was at the search that our gudesire, Monkbarns that then was, made wi' auld Rab Tull's assistance;--but ne'er-be-licket could they find that was to their purpose.Aud sae, after they bad touzled out mony a leather poke-full o' papers, the town-clerk had his drap punch at e'en to wash the dust out of his throat--we never were glass-breakers in this house, Mr.Lovel, but the body bad got sic a trick of sippling and tippling wi' the bailies and deacons when they met (which was amaist ilka night) concerning the common gude o' the burgh, that he couldna weel sleep without it--But his punch he gat, and to bed he gaed; and in the middle of the night he got a fearfu' wakening!--he was never just himsell after it, and he was strucken wi' the dead palsy that very day four years.He thought, Mr.Lovel, that he heard the curtains o' his bed fissil, and out he lookit, fancying, puir man, it might hae been the cat--But he saw--God hae a care o' us! it gars my flesh aye creep, though I hae tauld the story twenty times--he saw a weel-fa'ard auld gentleman standing by his bedside, in the moonlight, in a queer-fashioned dress, wi' mony a button and band-string about it, and that part o' his garments which it does not become a leddy to particulareeze, was baith side and wide, and as mony plies o't as of ony Hamburgh skipper's--He had a beard too, and whiskers turned upwards on his upper-lip, as lang as baudrons'--and mony mair particulars there were that Rab Tull tauld o', but they are forgotten now--it's an auld story.
Aweel, Rab was a just-living man for a country writer--and he was less feared than maybe might just hae been expected; and he asked in the name o' goodness what the apparition wanted--and the spirit answered in an unknown tongue.Then Rab said he tried him wi' Erse, for he cam in his youth frae the braes of Glenlivat--but it wadna do.Aweel, in this strait, he bethought him of the twa or three words o' Latin that he used in making out the town's deeds, and be had nae sooner tried the spirit wi'
that, than out cam sic a blatter o' Latin about his lugs, that poor Rab Tull, wha was nae great scholar, was clean overwhelmed.
Od, but he was a bauld body, and he minded the Latin name for the deed that he was wanting.It was something about a cart, I fancy, for the ghaist cried aye, _Carter, carter_--''
``_Carta,_ you transformer of languages!'' cried Oldbuck;--``if my ancestor had learned no other language in the other world, at least he would not forget the Latinity for which he was so famous while in this.''
``Weel, weel, _carta_ be it then, but they ca'd it _carter_ that tell'd me the story.It cried aye _carta,_ if sae be that it was _carta,_ and made a sign to Rab to follow it.Rab Tull keepit a Highland heart, and banged out o' bed, and till some of his readiest claes--and he did follow the thing up stairs and down stairs to the place we ca' the high dow-cot--(a sort of a little tower in the corner of the auld house, where there was a Tickle o' useless boxes and trunks)--and there the ghaist gae Rab a kick wi' the tae foot, and a kick wi' the tother, to that very auld east-country tabernacle of a cabinet that my brother has standing beside his library table, and then disappeared like a fuff o'
tobacco, leaving Rab in a very pitiful condition.''