d
to me as if there was something neither right nor regular; indeed, to say
the truth, I was no ill pleased that the bailie took on him what he did;
so I allowed him to write himself to the lord advocate; and, as the
sequel showed, it was a blessed prudence on my part that I did so. For
no sooner did his lordship receive the bailie's terrifying letter, than a
special king's messenger was sent to take the spy into Edinburgh Castle;
and nothing could surpass the great importance that Bailie Booble made of
himself, on the occasion, on getting the man into a coach, and two
dragoons to guard him into Glasgow.

But oh! what a dejected man was the miserable Bailie Booble, and what a
laugh rose from shop and chamber, when the tidings came out from
Edinburgh that, "the alien enemy" was but a French cook coming over from
Dublin, with the intent to take up the trade of a confectioner in
Glasgow, and that the map of the Clyde was nothing but a plan for the
outset of a fashionable table--the bailie's island of Arran being the
roast beef, and the craig of Ailsa the plum-pudding, and Plada a butter-
boat. Nobody enjoyed the jocularity of the business more than myself;
but I trembled when I thought of the escape that my honour and character
had with the lord advocate. I trow, Bailie Booble never set himself so
forward from that day to this.

CHAPTER XIII--THE MEAL MOB

After the close of the American war, I had, for various reasons of a
private nature, a wish to sequestrate myself for a time, from any very
ostensible part in public affairs. Still, however, desiring to retain a
mean of resuming my station, and of maintaining my influence in the
council, I bespoke Mr Keg to act in my place as deputy for My Lord, who
was regularly every year at this time chosen into the provostry.

This Mr Keg was a man who had made a competency by the Isle-of-Man trade,
and had come in from the laighlands, where he had been apparently in the
farming line, to live among us; but for many a day, on account of
something that happened when he was concerned in the smuggling, he kept
himself cannily aloof from all sort of town matters; deporting himself
with a most creditable sobriety; in so much, that there was at one time a
sough that Mr Pittle, the minister, our friend, had put him on the leet
for an elder. That post, however, if it was offered to him, he certainly
never accepted; but I jealouse that he took the rumour o't for a sign
that hi