heal among us again; and now that I think o't, how has
it happent that ye hae never been a bailie? I'm sure it's due both to
your character and circumstance that ye should take upon you a portion of
the burden of the town honours. Therefore, Mr Peevie, would it no be a
very proper thing, in the choice of the new councillors, to take men of a
friendly mind towards you, and of an easy and manageable habit of will."

The old man was mightily taken with this insinuation, and acknowledged
that it would give him pleasure to be a bailie next year. We then
cannily proceeded, just as if one thing begat another, to discourse anent
the different men that were likely to do as councillors, and fixed at
last on Alexander Hodden the blanket merchant, and Patrick Fegs the
grocer, both excellent characters of their kind. There was not, indeed,
in the whole burgh at the time, a person of such a flexible easy nature
as Mr Hodden; and his neighbour, Mr Fegs, was even better, for he was so
good-tempered, and kindly, and complying, that the very callants at the
grammar school had nicknamed him Barley-sugar Pate.

"No better than them can be," said I to Mr Peevie; "they are likewise
both well to do in the world, and should be brought into consequence; and
the way o't canna be in better hands than your own. I would, therefore,
recommend it to you to see them on the subject, and, if ye find them
willing, lay your hairs in the water to bring the business to a bearing."

Accordingly, we settled to speak of it as a matter in part decided, that
Mr Hodden and Mr Fegs were to be the two new councillors; and to make the
thing sure, as soon as I went home I told it to Mrs Pawkie as a state
secret, and laid my injunctions on her not to say a word about it, either
to Mrs Hodden or to Mrs Fegs, the wives of our two elect; for I knew her
disposition, and that, although to a certainty not a word of the fact
would escape from her, yet she would be utterly unable to rest until she
had made the substance of it known in some way or another; and, as I
expected, so it came to pass. She went that very night to Mrs Rickerton,
the mother of Mr Feg's wife, and, as I afterwards picked out of her, told
the old lady that may be, ere long, she would hear of some great honour
that would come to her family, with other mystical intimations that
pointed plainly to the dignities of the magistracy; the which, when she
had returned home, so worked upon the imagination of