not a man for that--I keep the kirk, and I abhor Popery--I have stood
up for the House of Hanover, and for liberty and property--I carried
arms, sir, against the Pretender, when three of the Highlandmen's
baggage-carts were stopped at Ecclefechan; and I had an especial loss of
a hundred pounds'--

'Scots,' interrupted Fairford. 'You forget you told me all this before.'

'Scots or English, it was too much for me to lose,' said the provost;
so you see I am not a person to pack or peel with Jacobites, and such
unfreemen as poor Redgauntlet.'

'Granted, granted, Mr. Crosbie; and what then?' said Alan Fairford.

'Why, then, it follows, that if I am to help you at this pinch, if
cannot be by and through my ain personal knowledge, but through some
fitting agent or third person.'

'Granted again,' said Fairford. 'And pray who may this third person be?'

'Wha but Pate Maxwell of Summertrees--him they call Pate-in-Peril.'

'An old Forty-five man, of course?' said Fairford.

'Ye may swear that,' replied the provost--'as black a Jacobite as the
auld leaven can make him; but a sonsy, merry companion, that none of us
think it worth while to break wi' for all his brags and his clavers.
You would have thought, if he had had but his own way at Derby, he would
have marched Charlie Stuart through between Wade and the Duke, as a
thread goes through the needle's ee, and seated him in Saint James's
before you could have said haud your hand. But though he is a windy body
when he gets on his auld-warld stories, he has mair gumption in him than
most people--knows business, Mr. Alan, being bred to the law; but never
took the gown, because of the oaths, which kept more folk out then than
they do now--the more's the pity.'

'What! are you sorry, provost, that Jacobitism is upon the decline?'
said Fairford.

'No, no,' answered the provost--'I am only sorry for folks losing the
tenderness of conscience which they used to have. I have a son breeding
to the bar, Mr. Fairford; and, no doubt, considering my services and
sufferings, I might have looked for some bit postie to him; but if the
muckle tykes come in--I mean a' these Maxwells, and Johnstones, and
great lairds, that the oaths used to keep out lang syne--the bits o'
messan doggies, like my son, and maybe like your father's son, Mr. Alan,
will be sair put to the wall.'

'But to return to the subject, Mr. Crosbie,' said Fairford, 'do you
really think it likely that this Mr. Maxwell wil