e clear evidence against
him, and was, after his fashion, grateful for such exertions as had
been made in his behalf. He requested the young advocate to visit him
once more before he left the place. Scott's curiosity induced him to
accept this invitation, and his friend, as soon as they were alone
together in the _condemned cell_, said--"I am very sorry, sir, that I
have no fee to offer you--so let me beg your acceptance of two bits of
advice which may be useful perhaps when you come to have a house of
your own. I am done with practice, you see, and here is my legacy.
Never keep a large watchdog out of doors--we can always silence them
cheaply--indeed if it be a _dog_, 'tis easier than whistling--but tie
a little tight yelping terrier within; and secondly, put no trust in
nice, clever, gimcrack locks--the only thing that bothers us is a huge
old heavy one, no matter how simple the construction,--and the ruder
and rustier the key, so much the better for the housekeeper." I
remember hearing him tell this story some thirty years after at a
Judges' dinner at Jedburgh, and he summed it up with a rhyme--"Ay, ay,
my lord," (I think he addressed his friend Lord Meadowbank)--

"Yelping terrier, rusty key,
Was Walter Scott's best Jeddart fee."

[Footnote 111: A hare.]

At these, or perhaps the next assizes, he was also counsel in an
appeal case touching a cow which his client had sold as sound, but
which the court below (the sheriff) had pronounced to have what is
called _the cliers_--a disease analogous to glanders in a horse. In
opening his case {p.200} before Sir David Rae, Lord Eskgrove, Scott
stoutly maintained the healthiness of the cow, who, as he said, had
merely a cough. "Stop there," quoth the judge; "I have had plenty of
healthy kye in my time, but I never heard of are of them coughing. A
coughin' cow!--that will never do. Sustain the sheriff's judgment, and
decern."

A day or two after this, Scott and his old companion were again on
their way into Liddesdale, and "just," says the Shortreed Memorandum,
"as we were passing by Singdon, we saw a grand herd o' cattle a'
feeding by the roadside, and a fine young bullock, the best in the
whole lot, was in the midst of them, coughing lustily. 'Ah,' said
Scott, 'what a pity for my client that old Eskgrove had not taken
Singdon on his way to the town. That bonny creature would have saved
us--

"A Daniel come to judgment, yea a Daniel;