ncil-chamber with my fingers in my ears.

In a little while a shout of triumph rose from the mob, and we heard them
returning, and I felt, as it were, relieved; but the sound of their
voices became hoarse and terrible as they drew near, and, in a moment, I
heard the jingle of twenty broken windows rattle in the street. My heart
misgave me; and, indeed, it was my own windows. They left not one pane
unbroken; and nothing kept them from demolishing the house to the ground-
stone but the exhortations of Major Pipe, who, on hearing the uproar, was
up and out, and did all in his power to arrest the fury of the tumult. It
seems, the mob had taken it into their heads that I had signed what they
called the press-warrants; and on driving the gang out of the town, and
rescuing the man, they came to revenge themselves on me and mine; which
is the cause that made me say it was a miraculous instinct that led Mrs
Pawkie to take the family to Mr Pittle's; for, had they been in the
house, it is not to be told what the consequences might have been.

Before morning the riot was ended, but the damage to my house was very
great; and I was intending, as the public had done the deed, that the
town should have paid for it. "But," said Mr Keelivine, the town-clerk,
"I think you may do better; and this calamity, if properly handled to the
Government, may make your fortune," I reflected on the hint; and
accordingly, the next day, I went over to the regulating captain of the
pressgang, and represented to him the great damage and detriment which I
had suffered, requesting him to represent to government that it was all
owing to the part I had taken in his behalf. To this, for a time, he
made some scruple of objection; but at last he drew up, in my presence, a
letter to the lords of the admiralty, telling what he had done, and how
he and his men had been ill-used, and that the house of the
chief-magistrate of the town had been in a manner destroyed by the
rioters.

By the same post I wrote off myself to the lord advocate, and likewise to
the secretary of state, in London; commanding, very properly, the prudent
and circumspect manner in which the officer had come to apprize me of his
duty, and giving as faithful an account as I well could of the riot;
concluding with a simple notification of what had been done to my house,
and the outcry that might be raised in the town were any part of the
town's funds to be used in the repairs.

Both the lor