collection of every one. At the supposed date of the
novel also a man of the name of Merrilees, a tanner in Leith, absconded
from his country to escape his creditors; and after having slain his own
mastiff dog, and put a bit of red cloth in its mouth, as if it had died
in a contest with soldiers, and involved his own existence in as
much mystery as possible, made his escape into Yorkshire. Here he was
detected by persons sent in search of him, to whom he gave a portentous
account of his having been carried off and concealed in various places.
Mr. Merrilees was, in short, a kind of male Elizabeth Canning, but did
not trespass on the public credulity quite so long.

NOTE 8.--CONCEALMENTS FOR THEFT AND SMUGGLING

I am sorry to say that the modes of concealment described in the
imaginary premises of Mr. Trumbull, are of a kind which have been common
on the frontiers of late years. The neighbourhood of two nations having
different laws, though united in government, still leads to a multitude
of transgressions on the Border, and extreme difficulty in apprehending
delinquents. About twenty years since, as far as my recollection serves,
there was along the frontier an organized gang of coiners, forgers,
smugglers, and other malefactors, whose operations were conducted on a
scale not inferior to what is here described. The chief of the party was
one Richard Mendham a carpenter, who rose to opulence, although ignorant
even of the arts of reading and writing. But he had found a short
road to wealth, and had taken singular measures for conducting his
operations. Amongst these, he found means to build, in a suburb
of Berwick called Spittal, a street of small houses, as if for the
investment of property. He himself inhabited one of these; another, a
species of public-house, was open to his confederates, who held secret
and unsuspected communication with him by crossing the roofs of the
intervening houses, and descending by a trap-stair, which admitted them
into the alcove of the dining-room of Dick Mendham's private mansion.
A vault, too, beneath Mendham's stable, was accessible in the manner
mentioned in the novel. The post of one of the stalls turned round on
a bolt being withdrawn, and gave admittance to a subterranean place of
concealment for contraband and stolen goods, to a great extent. Richard
Mendham, the head of this very formidable conspiracy, which involved
malefactors of every kind, was tried and executed at Jedburgh,