gs--that's a story!"

I thought I would have been constrained to send her to prison, the woman
grew so bold and contumacious, when Mr Hickery came in, and hearing what
was going forward, was evidently working himself up to take the randy's
part; but fortunately she had a suspicion that all the town-council and
magistrates were in league against her, on account of the repute of her
house, so that when he enquired of her where she lived, with a view, as I
suspect, of interceding, she turned to him, and with a leer and a laugh,
said, "Dear me, Mr Hickery, I'm sure ye hae nae need to speer that!"

The insinuation set up his birses; but she bamboozled him with her
banter, and raised such a laugh against him, that he was fairly driven
from the council room, and I was myself obliged to let her go, without
exacting the fine.

Who would have thought that this affair was to prove to me the means of
an easy riddance of Mr Hickery? But so it turned out; for whether or not
there was any foundation for the traffickings with him which she
pretended, he never could abide to hear the story alluded to, which, when
I discerned, I took care, whenever he showed any sort of inclination to
molest the council with his propugnacity, to joke him about his bonny
sweetheart, "the Tappit-hen," and he instantly sang dumb, and quietly
slipped away; by which it may be seen how curiously events come to pass,
since, out of the very first cause of his thwarting me in the lamps, I
found, in process of time, a way of silencing him far better than any
sort of truth or reason.

CHAPTER XXVIII--THE SECOND CROP OF VOLUNTEERS

I have already related, at full length, many of the particulars anent the
electing of the first set of volunteers; the which, by being germinated
partly under the old system of public intromission, was done with more
management and slight of art than the second. This, however, I will ever
maintain, was not owing to any greater spirit of corruption; but only and
solely to following the ancient dexterous ways, that had been, in a
manner, engrained with the very nature of every thing pertaining to the
representation of government as it existed, not merely in burgh towns,
but wheresoever the crown and ministers found it expedient to have their
lion's paw.

Matters were brought to a bearing differently, when, in the second
edition of the late war, it was thought necessary to call on the people
to resist the rampageous ambition