, to be seen in
the dusk of the evening, toddling home from the town-hall wi' goggling
een and havering tongues, and one of the town-officers following at a
distance in case of accidents; sic things ye ken, hae been, but nobody
would plead for their continuance."

Mr Peevie did not relish this, for in truth it came near his own doors,
it having been his annual practice for some years at the Michaelmas
dinner to give a sixpence to James Hound, the officer, to see him safe
home, and the very time before he had sat so long, that honest James was
obligated to cleek and oxter him the whole way; and in the way home, the
old man, cagie with what he had gotten, stood in the causey opposite to
Mr M'Vest's door, then deacon of the taylors, and trying to snap his
fingers, sang like a daft man,

'The sheets they were thin and the blankets were sma',
And the taylor fell through the bed, thimble and a'."

So that he was disconcerted by my innuendo, and shortly after left the
shop, I trow, with small inclination to propagate any sedition against
me, for the abbreviation I had made of the Michaelmas galravitching.

CHAPTER XLIV--THE CHURCH VACANT

I had long been sensible that, in getting Mr Pittle the kirk, I had acted
with the levity and indiscretion of a young man; but at that time I
understood not the nature of public trust, nor, indeed, did the community
at large. Men in power then ruled more for their own ends than in these
latter times; and use and wont sanctioned and sanctified many doings,
from the days of our ancestors, that, but to imagine, will astonish and
startle posterity. Accordingly, when Mr Pittle, after a lingering
illness, was removed from us, which happened in the first year of my
third provostry, I bethought me of the consequences which had ensued from
his presentation, and resolved within myself to act a very different part
in the filling up of the vacancy. With this intent, as soon as the
breath was out of his body, I sent round for some of the most weighty and
best considered of the councillors and elders, and told them that a great
trust was, by the death of the minister, placed in our hands, and that,
in these times, we ought to do what in us lay to get a shepherd that
would gather back to the establishment the flock which had been scattered
among the seceders, by the feckless crook and ill-guiding of their former
pastor.

They all agreed with me in this, and named one eminent divine af