l-handed for what benefit they might do the public; but as I
gathered experience, and saw the rising of the sharp-sighted spirit that
is now abroad among the affairs of men, I clearly discerned that it would
be more for the advantage of me and mine to act with a conformity
thereto, than to seek, by any similar wiles or devices, an immediate and
sicker advantage. I may therefore say, without a boast, that the two or
three years before my third provostry were as renowned and comfortable to
myself, upon the whole, as any reasonable man could look for. We cannot,
however, expect a full cup and measure of the sweets of life, without
some adulteration of the sour and bitter; and it was my lot and fate to
prove an experience of this truth, in a sudden and unaccountable falling
off from all moral decorum in a person of my brother's only son, Richard,
a lad that was a promise of great ability in his youth.

He was just between the tyning and the winning, as the saying is, when
the playactors, before spoken off, came to the town, being then in his
eighteenth year. Naturally of a light-hearted and funny disposition, and
possessing a jocose turn for mimickry, he was a great favourite among his
companions, and getting in with the players, it seems drew up with that
little-worth, demure daffodel, Miss Scarborough, through the
instrumentality of whose condisciples and the randy Mrs Beaufort, that
riot at Widow Fenton's began, which ended in expurgating the town of the
whole gang, bag and baggage. Some there were, I shall here mention, who
said that the expulsion of the players was owing to what I had heard
anent the intromission of my nephew; but, in verity, I had not the least
spunk or spark of suspicion of what was going on between him and the
miss, till one night, some time after, Richard and the young laird of
Swinton, with others of their comrades, forgathered, and came to high
words on the subject, the two being rivals, or rather, as was said,
equally in esteem and favour with the lady.

Young Swinton was, to say the truth of him, a fine bold rattling lad,
warm in the temper, and ready with the hand, and no man's foe so much as
his own; for he was a spoiled bairn, through the partiality of old Lady
Bodikins, his grandmother, who lived in the turreted house at the town-
end, by whose indulgence he grew to be of a dressy and rakish
inclination, and, like most youngsters of the kind, was vain of his
shames, the which cost Mr Pi