a palace of that
redoubted monarch. It may be so, for there is no accounting for
constitutions; but had I been King David, I certainly should have
preferred, a place where the younger branches of the family would have
been less liable to the accident of catarrh.

Dreepdaily, in the olden time, was among the closest of all the burghs.
Its representation had a fixed price, which was always rigorously exacted
and punctually paid; and for half a year thereafter, the corporation made
merry thereon. The Reform Bill, therefore, was by no means popular in the
council. A number of discontented Radicals and of small householders, who
hitherto had been excluded from participation in the good things of the
state, now got upon the roll, and seemed determined for a time to carry
matters with a high hand, and to return a member of their own. And
doubtless they would have succeeded, had not the same spirit been abroad
in the sister burghs of Drouthielaw and Kittleweem, which, for some
especial reason or other, known doubtless to Lord John Russell, but
utterly unintelligible to the rest of mankind, were, though situated in
different counties, associated with Dreepdaily in the return of their
future member. Each of these places had a separate interest, and started a
separate man; so that, amidst this conflict of Liberalism, the old member
for Dreepdaily, a Conservative, again slipped into his place. The
consequence was, that the three burghs were involved in a desperate feud.

In these days there lived in Dreepdaily one Laurence Linklater, more
commonly known by the name of Tod Lowrie, who exercised the respectable
functions of a writer and a messenger-at-arms. Lowrie was a remarkably
acute individual, of the Gilbert Glossin school, by no means scrupulous in
his dealings, but of singular plausibility and courage. He had started in
life as a Radical, but finding that that line did not pay well, he had
prudently subsided into a Whig, and in that capacity had acquired a sort
of local notoriety. He had contrived, moreover, to gain a tolerable
footing in Drouthielaw, and in the course of time became intimately
acquainted with the circumstances of its inhabitants, and under the plea
of agency had contrived to worm the greater part of their title-deeds into
his keeping.

It then occurred to Lowrie, that, notwithstanding the discordant situation
of the burghs, something might be done to effect a union under his own
especial chieftainship. Not