ondition
of bearing the arms and name of the Castle Gower family; or that he was
married to Catherine Maxwell, a near relative of the family of Herries,
in the Stewartry of Kirkcudbright--a person of no very great beauty,
but sprightly, and of good manners. This woman had been brought up in
France, and was deeply tinged with French feelings. She had French cooks
and French milliners about her in abundance; and a French lackey was
considered by her as indispensable as meat and drink. Then she was
represented as being a proud, imperious woman, with a bad temper; which
was rendered worse by her continued fretting, in consequence of not
having any children to her husband; whereby the property would go away
to a son of her husband's brother. Sir Marmaduke and his lady had a
town-house in Edinburgh, in which they lived for the greater part of the
year, situated so as to look to the North Back of the Canongate, and
with an entry to it from that street, but the principal gate was from
the north side. A garden was attached to the house; and the stables
and coach-houses were situated at the foot of the garden. All these
premises are now removed; but Sir Marmaduke Maitland's house--or, as it
was styled, the Duke's house--at the period of this story, was a very
showy house, and very well known to the inhabitants of Edinburgh.

Now, at the foot of Leith Wynd, there lived, about the same time, a
poor widow woman, called Widow Willison, who had a son and a daughter.
She was the widow of a William Willison, who earned a livelihood by
the humble means of serving the inhabitants of Edinburgh with water,
which he conveyed to their doors by the means of an ass; and was, in
consequence, called Water Willie--a good, simple, honest creature; much
liked by his customers, from whom he never wanted a good diet; and had
no fault, but that of disliking the element in which he dealt. He liked
he said very well to drive water to the great folks, and he wished them
"meikle guid o't; but, for his ain pairt, he preferred whisky, which, he
thocht, was o' a warmer and mair congenial nature, and better suited to
the inside o' a rational animal, like man."

Strange enough, it was to William Willison's dislike to water that
people attributed his death. It would have been more logical--but
scandal is a bad logician--to have debited that event to the water; for,
though it will not conceal that Willie was drunk when he died, it was as
notorious that it was no