CHAPTER FIFTEENTH.
Be this letter delivered with haste--haste--post-haste! Ride, villain, ride,--for thy life--for thy life--for thy life.
Ancient Indorsation of Letters of Importance.
Leaving Mr.Oldbuck and his friend to enjoy their hard bargain of fish, we beg leave to transport the reader to the back-parlour of the post-master's house at Fairport, where his wife, he himself being absent, was employed in assorting for delivery the letters which had come by the Edinburgh post.

This is very often in country towns the period of the day when gossips find it particularly agreeable to call on the man or woman of letters, in order, from the outside of the epistles, and, if they are not belied, occasionally from the inside also, to amuse themselves with gleaning information, or forming conjectures about the correspondence and affairs of their neighbours.

Two females of this description were, at the time we mention, assisting, or impeding, Mrs.
Mailsetter in her official duty.
"Eh, preserve us, sirs!" said the butcher's wife, "there's ten-- eleven--twall letters to Tennant and Co .-- thae folk do mair business than a' the rest o' the burgh." "Ay; but see, lass," answered the baker's lady, "there's twa o' them faulded unco square, and sealed at the tae side--I doubt there will be protested bills in them." "Is there ony letters come yet for Jenny Caxon ?" inquired the woman of joints and giblets; "the lieutenant's been awa three weeks." "Just ane on Tuesday was a week," answered the dame of letters.
"Wast a ship-letter ?" asked the Fornerina.
"In troth wast." "It wad be frae the lieutenant then," replied the mistress of the rolls, somewhat disappointed--"I never thought he wad hae lookit ower his shouther after her." "Od, here's another," quoth Mrs.Mailsetter.

"A ship-letter--post-mark, Sunderland." All rushed to seize it.--"Na, na, leddies," said Mrs.
Mailsetter, interfering; "I hae had eneugh o' that wark--Ken ye that Mr.
Mailsetter got an unco rebuke frae the secretary at Edinburgh, for a complaint that was made about the letter of Aily Bisset's that ye opened, Mrs.Shortcake ?" "Me opened!" answered the spouse of the chief baker of Fairport; "ye ken yoursell, madam, it just cam open o' free will in my hand--what could I help it ?--folk suld seal wi' better wax." "Weel I wot that's true, too," said Mrs.Mailsetter, who kept a shop of small wares, "and we have got some that I can honestly recommend, if ye ken onybody wanting it.

But the short and the lang o't is, that we'll lose the place gin there's ony mair complaints o' the kind." "Hout, lass--the provost will take care o' that." "Na, na, I'll neither trust to provost nor bailier" said the postmistress,--"but I wad aye be obliging and neighbourly, and I'm no again your looking at the outside of a letter neither--See, the seal has an anchor on't--he's done't wi' ane o' his buttons, I'm thinking." "Show me! show me!" quoth the wives of the chief butcher and chief baker; and threw themselves on the supposed love-letter, like the weird sisters in Macbeth upon the pilot's thumb, with curiosity as eager and scarcely less malignant.