e glimpse of a terrible spirit in the air, the whole
multitude dropped the dirt and stones out of their hands, and, turning
their backs, flew into doors and closes, and were skailed before we knew
where we were. It is not to be told the laud and admiration that I got
for my ability in this business; for the major was so well pleased to
have been saved from a battle, that, at my suggestion, he wrote an
account of the whole business to the commander-in-chief, assuring him
that, but for me, and my great weight and authority in the town, nobody
could tell what the issue might have been; so that the Lord Advocate, to
whom the report was shown by the general, wrote me a letter of thanks in
the name of the government; and I, although not provost, was thus seen
and believed to be a person of the foremost note and consideration in the
town.

But although the mob was dispersed, as I have related, the consequences
did not end there; for, the week following, none of the farmers brought
in their victual; and there was a great lamentation and moaning in the
market-place when, on the Friday, not a single cart from the country was
to be seen, but only Simon Laidlaw's, with his timber caps and luggies;
and the talk was, that meal would be half-a-crown the peck. The grief,
however, of the business wasna visible till the Saturday--the wonted day
for the poor to seek their meat--when the swarm of beggars that came
forth was a sight truly calamitous. Many a decent auld woman that had
patiently eiked out the slender thread of a weary life with her wheel, in
privacy, her scant and want known only to her Maker, was seen going from
door to door with the salt tear in her e'e, and looking in the face of
the pitiful, being as yet unacquainted with the language of beggary; but
the worst sight of all was two bonny bairns, dressed in their best, of a
genteel demeanour, going from house to house like the hungry babes in the
wood: nobody kent who they were, nor whar they came from; but as I was
seeing them served myself at our door, I spoke to them, and they told me
that their mother was lying sick and ill at home. They were the orphans
of a broken merchant from Glasgow, and, with their mother, had come out
to our town the week before, without knowing where else to seek their
meat.

Mrs Pawkie, who was a tender-hearted mother herself, took in the bairns
on hearing this, and we made of them, and the same night, among our
acquaintance, we got a smal