s from the knowledge of future times,
although it was but a sort of sprose to make the world laugh. Fortunately
for my character, however, it did not fall out exactly in my hands,
although it happened in the course of my provostry. The matter spoken
of, was the affair of a Frenchman who was taken up as a spy; for the
American war was then raging, and the French had taken the part of the
Yankee rebels.

One day, in the month of August it was, I had gone on some private
concernment of my own to Kilmarnock, and Mr Booble, who was then oldest
Bailie, naturally officiated as chief magistrate in my stead.

There have been, as the world knows, a disposition on the part of the
grand monarque of that time, to invade and conquer this country, the
which made it a duty incumbent on all magistrates to keep a vigilant eye
on the in-comings and out-goings of aliens and other suspectable persons.
On the said day, and during my absence, a Frenchman, that could speak no
manner of English, somehow was discovered in the Cross-Key inns. What he
was, or where he came from, nobody at the time could tell, as I was
informed; but there he was, having come into the house at the door, with
a bundle in his hand, and a portmanty on his shoulder, like a traveller
out of some vehicle of conveyance. Mrs Drammer, the landlady, did not
like his looks; for he had toozy black whiskers, was lank and wan, and
moreover deformed beyond human nature, as she said, with a parrot nose,
and had no cravat, but only a bit black riband drawn through two button-
holes, fastening his ill-coloured sark neck, which gave him altogether
something of an unwholesome, outlandish appearance.

Finding he was a foreigner, and understanding that strict injunctions
were laid on the magistrates by the king and government anent the
egressing of such persons, she thought, for the credit of her house, and
the safety of the community at large, that it behoved her to send word to
me, then provost, of this man's visibility among us; but as I was not at
home, Mrs Pawkie, my wife, directed the messenger to Bailie Booble's. The
bailie was, at all times, overly ready to claught at an alarm; and when
he heard the news, he went straight to the council-room, and sending for
the rest of the council, ordered the alien enemy, as he called the
forlorn Frenchman, to be brought before him. By this time, the suspicion
of a spy in the town had spread far and wide; and Mrs Pawkie told me,
that th