n pence a
sitter, would yield better than a hundred pounds a-year; so that there
was no scruple, on the part of the town-council, in borrowing the money
wanted. This was the first public debt ever contracted by the
corporation, and people were very fain to get their money lodged at five
per cent. on such good security; in so much, that we had a great deal
more offered than we required at that time and epoch.

CHAPTER XVII--THE LAW PLEA

The repair of the kirk was undertaken by contract with William Plane, the
joiner, with whom I was in terms at the time anent the bigging of a land
of houses on my new steading at the town-end. A most reasonable man in
all things he was, and in no concern of my own had I a better
satisfaction than in the house he built for me at the conjuncture when he
had the town's work in the kirk; but there was at that period among us a
certain person, of the name of Nabal Smeddum, a tobacconist by calling,
who, up to this season, had been regarded but as a droll and comical body
at a coothy crack. He was, in stature, of the lower order of mankind,
but endowed with an inclination towards corpulency, by which he had
acquired some show of a belly, and his face was round, and his cheeks
both red and sleeky. He was, however, in his personalities, chiefly
remarkable for two queer and twinkling little eyes, and for a habitual
custom of licking his lips whenever he said any thing of pith or
jocosity, or thought that he had done so, which was very often the case.
In his apparel, as befitted his trade, he wore a suit of snuff-coloured
cloth, and a brown round-eared wig, that curled close in to his neck.

Mr Smeddum, as I have related, was in some estimation for his comicality;
but he was a dure hand at an argument, and would not see the plainest
truth when it was not on his side of the debate. No occasion or cause,
however, had come to pass by which this inherent cross-grainedness was
stirred into action, till the affair of reseating the kirk--a measure, as
I have mentioned, which gave the best satisfaction; but it happened that,
on a Saturday night, as I was going soberly home from a meeting of the
magistrates in the clerk's chamber, I by chance recollected that I stood
in need of having my box replenished; and accordingly, in the most
innocent and harmless manner that it was possible for a man to do, I
stepped into this Mr Smeddum, the tobacconist's shop, and while he was
compounding my mixtur