It will have a gude active look, and I hae aye plenty on my list, that wadna be a hair the waur of a week or twa's imprisonment; and if ye thought it no strictly just, ye could be just the easier wi' them the neist time they did onything to deserve it; they arena the sort to be lang o' gieing ye an opportunity to clear scores wi' them on that account." "I doubt that will hardly do in this case, Mr.Sharpitlaw," returned the town-clerk; "they'll run their letters,* and be adrift again, before ye ken where ye are." * A Scottish form of procedure, answering, in some respects, to the English Habeas Corpus.
"I will speak to the Lord Provost," said the magistrate, "about Ratcliffe's business.

Mr.Sharpitlaw, you will go with me, and receive instructions--something may be made too out of this story of Butler's and his unknown gentleman--I know no business any man has to swagger about in the King's Park, and call himself the devil, to the terror of honest folks, who dinna care to hear mair about the devil than is said from the pulpit on the Sabbath.

I cannot think the preacher himsell wad be heading the mob, though the time has been, they hae been as forward in a bruilzie as their neighbours." "But these times are lang by," said Mr.Sharpitlaw.

"In my father's time, there was mair search for silenced ministers about the Bow-head and the Covenant Close, and all the tents of Kedar, as they ca'd the dwellings o' the godly in those days, than there's now for thieves and vagabonds in the Laigh Calton and the back o' the Canongate.

But that time's weel by, an it bide.