ffect to keep Henry Wynd in his present posture than the repeated
summons of many voices from without had to bring him downstairs.

"Mass, townsmen," cried one hardy citizen to his companions, "the saucy
smith but jests with us! Let us into the house, and bring him out by the
lug and the horn."

"Take care what you are doing," said a more cautious assailant. "The man
that presses on Henry Gow's retirement may go into his house with sound
bones, but will return with ready made work for the surgeon. But here
comes one has good right to do our errand to him, and make the recreant
hear reason on both sides of his head."

The person of whom this was spoken was no other than Simon Glover
himself. He had arrived at the fatal spot where the unlucky bonnet
maker's body was lying, just in time to discover, to his great relief,
that when it was turned with the face upwards by Bailie Craigdallie's
orders, the features of the poor braggart Proudfute were recognised,
when the crowd expected to behold those of their favorite champion,
Henry Smith. A laugh, or something approaching to one, went among those
who remembered how hard Oliver had struggled to obtain the character
of a fighting man, however foreign to his nature and disposition, and
remarked now that he had met with a mode of death much better suited
to his pretensions than to his temper. But this tendency to ill timed
mirth, which savoured of the rudeness of the times, was at once hushed
by the voice, and cries, and exclamations of a woman who struggled
through the crowd, screaming at the same time, "Oh, my husband--my
husband!"

Room was made for the sorrower, who was followed by two or three female
friends. Maudie Proudfute had been hitherto only noticed as a good
looking, black haired woman, believed to be "dink" and disdainful to
those whom she thought meaner or poorer than herself, and lady and
empress over her late husband, whom she quickly caused to lower his
crest when she chanced to hear him crowing out of season. But now,
under the influence of powerful passion, she assumed a far more imposing
character.

"Do you laugh," she said, "you unworthy burghers of Perth, because one
of your own citizens has poured his blood into the kennel? or do you
laugh because the deadly lot has lighted on my husband? How has he
deserved this? Did he not maintain an honest house by his own industry,
and keep a creditable board, where the sick had welcome and the poor had
relief?