enquire your intents, before matters gang to greater
length."

He looked a little dumfoundered at this salutation, and was at a loss for
an answer, so I continued--

"If your designs be honourable, and no doubt they are, now's your time;
strike while the iron's hot. By the death of the doctor, the kirk's
vacant, the town-council have the patronage; and, if ye marry Miss Lizy,
my interest and influence shall not be slack in helping you into the
poopit." In short, out of what passed that night, on the Monday
following Mr Pittle and Miss Lizy were married; and by my dexterity,
together with the able help I had in Bailie M'Lucre, he was in due season
placed and settled in the parish; and the next year more than fifty acres
of the town-moor were inclosed on a nine hundred and ninety-nine years'
tack at an easy rate between me and the bailie, he paying the half of the
expense of the ditching and rooting out of the whins; and it was
acknowledged by every one that saw it, that there had not been a greater
improvement for many years in all the country side. But to the best
actions there will be adverse and discontented spirits; and, on this
occasion, there were not wanting persons naturally of a disloyal
opposition temper, who complained of the inclosure as a usurpation of the
rights and property of the poorer burghers. Such revilings, however, are
what all persons in authority must suffer; and they had only the effect
of making me button my coat, and look out the crooser to the blast.

CHAPTER IX--AN EXECUTION

The attainment of honours and dignities is not enjoyed without a portion
of trouble and care, which, like a shadow, follows all temporalities. On
the very evening of the same day that I was first chosen to be a bailie,
a sore affair came to light, in the discovery that Jean Gaisling had
murdered her bastard bairn. She was the daughter of a donsie mother,
that could gie no name to her gets, of which she had two laddies, besides
Jean. The one of them had gone off with the soldiers some time before;
the other, a douce well-behaved callan, was in my lord's servitude, as a
stable boy at the castle. Jeanie herself was the bonniest lassie in the
whole town, but light-headed, and fonder of outgait and blether in the
causey than was discreet of one of her uncertain parentage. She was, at
the time when she met with her misfortune, in the service of Mrs
Dalrymple, a colonel's widow, that came out of the army and