ls! Ay, he forgot wha said, "Vengeance is mine, and I will
repay it."'

'Weel, aweel, sirs,' said Jabos, whose hard-headed and uncultivated
shrewdness seemed sometimes to start the game when others beat the
bush--'weel, weel, ye may be a' mista'en yet; I'll never believe that a
man would lay a plan to shoot another wi' his ain gun. Lord help ye, I
was the keeper's assistant down at the Isle mysell, and I'll uphaud it
the biggest man in Scotland shouldna take a gun frae me or I had weized
the slugs through him, though I'm but sic a little feckless body, fit for
naething but the outside o' a saddle and the fore-end o' a poschay; na,
na, nae living man wad venture on that. I'll wad my best buckskins, and
they were new coft at Kirkcudbright Fair, it's been a chance job after
a'. But if ye hae naething mair to say to me, I am thinking I maun gang
and see my beasts fed'; and he departed accordingly.

The hostler, who had accompanied him, gave evidence to the same purpose.
He and Mrs. Mac-Candlish were then reinterrogated whether Brown had no
arms with him on that unhappy morning. 'None,' they said, 'but an
ordinary bit cutlass or hanger by his side.'

'Now,' said the Deacon, taking Glossin by the button (for, in considering
this intricate subject, he had forgot Glossin's new accession of
rank),'this is but doubtfu' after a', Maister Gilbert; for it was not sae
dooms likely that he would go down into battle wi' sic sma' means.'

Glossin extricated himself from the Deacon's grasp and from the
discussion, though not with rudeness; for it was his present interest to
buy golden opinions from all sorts of people. He inquired the price of
tea and sugar, and spoke of providing himself for the year; he gave Mrs.
Mac-Candlish directions to have a handsome entertainment in readiness for
a party of five friends whom he intended to invite to dine with him at
the Gordon Arms next Saturday week; and, lastly, he gave a half-crown to
Jock Jabos, whom the hostler had deputed to hold his steed.

'Weel,' said the Deacon to Mrs. Mac-Candlish, as he accepted her offer of
a glass of bitters at the bar, 'the deil's no sae ill as he's ca'd. It's
pleasant to see a gentleman pay the regard to the business o' the county
that Mr. Glossin does.'

'Ay, 'deed is't, Deacon,' answered the landlady; 'and yet I wonder our
gentry leave their ain wark to the like o' him. But as lang as siller's
current, Deacon, folk maunna look ower nicely at what king's hea