He was hanged; and behold! When I met Mr.Symon in the causeway, I was fain to pull off my beaver to him like a good little boy before his dominie.

He had been hanged by fraud and violence, and the world wagged along, and there was not a pennyweight of difference; and the villains of that horrid plot were decent, kind, respectable fathers of families, who went to kirk and took the sacrament! But I had had my view of that detestable business they call politics--I had seen it from behind, when it is all bones and blackness; and I was cured for life of any temptations to take part in it again.

A plain, quiet, private path was that which I was ambitious to walk in, when I might keep my head out of the way of dangers and my conscience out of the road of temptation.

For, upon a retrospect, it appeared I had not done so grandly, after all; but with the greatest possible amount of big speech and preparation, had accomplished nothing.
The 25th of the same month, a ship was advertised to sail from Leith; and I was suddenly recommended to make up my mails for Leyden.

To Prestongrange I could, of course, say nothing; for I had already been a long while sorning on his house and table.