here, and keeping them under restraint for
many weeks. On this account, Mr. Fairford was naturally led to
feel anxiety concerning the fate of his late inmate; and, at a less
interesting moment, would certainly have set out himself, or licensed
his son to go in pursuit of his friend.

But, alas! he was both a father and an agent. In the one capacity, he
looked on his son as dearer to him than all the world besides; in the
other, the lawsuit which he conducted was to him like an infant to its
nurse, and the case of Poor Peter Peebles against Plainstanes was, he
saw, adjourned, perhaps SINE DIE, should this document reach the hands
of his son. The mutual and enthusiastical affection betwixt the young
men was well known to him; and he concluded that if the precarious state
of Latimer were made known to Alan Fairford, it would render him not
only unwilling, but totally unfit, to discharge the duty of the day to
which the old gentleman attached such ideas of importance.

On mature reflection, therefore, he resolved, though not without
some feelings of compunction, to delay communicating to his son the
disagreeable intelligence which he had received, until the business of
the day should be ended. The delay, he persuaded himself, could be of
little consequence to Darsie Latimer, whose folly, he dared to say, had
led him into some scrape which would meet an appropriate punishment in
some accidental restraint, which would be thus prolonged for only a few
hours longer. Besides, he would have time to speak to the sheriff of the
county--perhaps to the King's Advocate--and set about the matter in
a regular manner, or, as he termed it, as summing up the duties of
a solicitor, to AGE AS ACCORDS. [A Scots law phrase, of no very
determinate import, meaning, generally, to do what is fitting.]

The scheme, as we have seen, was partially successful, and was only
ultimately defeated, as he confessed to himself with shame, by his own
very unbusiness-like mistake of shuffling the provost's letter, in the
hurry and anxiety of the morning, among some papers belonging to Peter
Peebles's affairs, and then handing it to his son, without observing
the blunder. He used to protest, even till the day of his death, that he
never had been guilty of such an inaccuracy as giving a paper out of his
hand without looking at the docketing, except on that unhappy occasion,
when, of all others, he had such particular reason to regret his
negligence.

Disturb