d, whether as poor weaver or as Golden
Farmer, had his knife into Cairney for some old quarrel which most
likely Cairney had himself forgotten.

At any rate, there was nothing against my riding to Longtown to see.
Nothing against my trying, at least, to come by my own. Still it was
with an angry and unsettled mind, but a firm determination not to be
cheated if I could help it, that I rode off to Longtown on Dapple, the
good and trusty mare I had bought as a bargain from the heirs and
assigns of Mr. Henry Foster, sometime deceased.

My wife was most difficult as to my riding alone, but if a man is to
take account of the whim-whams of his women-folk, he will have time for
little else. So I gave Joseph and Kingsman sufficient directions and
elaborate instructions to pass them over till my return, and so parted.

There is nothing to note on the journey to Longtown. I fell into
converse with several farmers and made arrangements with one to take
his young pigs at valuation--which I judged a good affair to me, his
valuator being largely indebted to me in the line of bone manures and
feeding stuffs.

But beyond that nothing, and even that affair was quite in the course
of business, though it has not yet matured.

For, perhaps owing to the unsettled state of the country, the pigs have
been anxious-minded and run to legs, utterly refusing to put on flesh,
which, as I understand it, is the first duty of pig. I came somewhere
across a book by Thomas Carlyle in which he stated this somewhat
strongly. I was much struck by the strength and precision of the
argumentation, and wished that at all times he had thought fit to write
with similar clearness. There is no doubt that the man had the
ability. I have read worse newspaper articles.

I found my man without great difficulty, and duly "riested" or arrested
the moneys due to me, in the hands of Mr. Lightbody the auctioneer,
taking the said Mr. Lightbody's cheque on a Thorsby bank--both as more
portable, and also to give that sound and well-considered man time to
settle with the buyers of the Cairney cattle--lots A, B, and C, on
which I had first charge.

Now, I am not a man ever to halt at markets, or to drink in public
places--more, that is, than to clinch a bargain, as an honest man
ought, neither with stinting nor with offensive liberality. I even
made it up with Cairney, though at first, of course, he was neither to
hold nor to bind. He threatened to bring me up "