ddum the
tobacconist's niece, she went to the green, and got everything safely
housed, yet still Jeanie Tirlet never made her appearance.

Mrs Girdwood and her daughters having returned home, in a most uneasy
state of mind on the lassie's account, the deacon himself came over to
me, to consult what he ought to do as the head of a family. But I
advised him to wait till Jeanie cast up, which was the next morning.
Where she had been, and who she was with, could never be delved out of
her; but the deacon brought her to the clerk's chamber, before Bailie
Kittlewit, who was that day acting magistrate, and he sentenced her to be
dismissed from her servitude with no more than the wage she had actually
earned. The lassie was conscious of the ill turn she had played, and
would have submitted in modesty; but one of the writers' clerks, an
impudent whipper-snapper, that had more to say with her than I need to
say, bade her protest and appeal against the interlocutor, which the
daring gipsy, so egged on, actually did, and the appeal next court day
came before me. Whereupon, I, knowing the outs and ins of the case,
decerned that she should be fined five shillings to the poor of the
parish, and ordained to go back to Mrs Girdwood's, and there stay out the
term of her servitude, or failing by refusal so to do, to be sent to
prison, and put to hard labour for the remainder of the term.

Every body present, on hearing the circumstances, thought this a most
judicious and lenient sentence; but so thought not the other servant
lasses of the town; for in the evening, as I was going home, thinking no
harm, on passing the Cross-well, where a vast congregation of them were
assembled with their stoups discoursing the news of the day, they opened
on me like a pack of hounds at a tod, and I verily believed they would
have mobbed me had I not made the best of my way home. My wife had been
at the window when the hobleshow began, and was just like to die of
diversion at seeing me so set upon by the tinklers; and when I entered
the dining-room she said, "Really, Mr Pawkie, ye're a gallant man, to be
so weel in the good graces of the ladies." But although I have often
since had many a good laugh at the sport, I was not overly pleased with
Mrs Pawkie at the time--particularly as the matter between the deacon's
wife and Jeanie did not end with my interlocutor. For the latheron's
friend in the court having discovered that I had not decerned she was