's just,' said I, 'amaist as silly as our auld daft
laird here and his gomerils o' sons, wi' his huntsmen and his hounds, and
his hunting cattle and horns, riding haill days after a bit beast that
winna weigh sax punds when they hae catched it.'"

"You argued most admirably, Andrew," said I, willing to encourage him to
get into the marrow of his intelligence; "and what said Pate?"

"Ou," he said, "what better could be expected of a wheen pock-pudding
English folk?--But as to the robbery, it's like that when they're a' at
the thrang o' their Whig and Tory wark, and ca'ing ane anither, like
unhanged blackguards--up gets ae lang-tongued chield, and he says, that
a' the north of England were rank Jacobites (and, quietly, he wasna far
wrang maybe), and that they had levied amaist open war, and a king's
messenger had been stoppit and rubbit on the highway, and that the best
bluid o' Northumberland had been at the doing o't--and mickle gowd ta'en
aff him, and mony valuable papers; and that there was nae redress to be
gotten by remeed of law for the first justice o' the peace that the
rubbit man gaed to, he had fund the twa loons that did the deed birling
and drinking wi' him, wha but they; and the justice took the word o' the
tane for the compearance o' the tither; and that they e'en gae him
leg-bail, and the honest man that had lost his siller was fain to leave
the country for fear that waur had come of it."

"Can this be really true?" said I.

"Pate swears it's as true as that his ellwand is a yard lang--(and so it
is, just bating an inch, that it may meet the English measure)--And when
the chield had said his warst, there was a terrible cry for names, and
out comes he wi' this man Morris's name, and your uncle's, and Squire
Inglewood's, and other folk's beside" (looking sly at me)--"And then
another dragon o' a chield got up on the other side, and said, wad they
accuse the best gentleman in the land on the oath of a broken
coward?--for it's like that Morris had been drummed out o' the army for
rinning awa in Flanders; and he said, it was like the story had been
made up between the minister and him or ever he had left Lunnun; and
that, if there was to be a search-warrant granted, he thought the siller
wad be fund some gate near to St. James's Palace. Aweel, they trailed up
Morris to their bar, as they ca't, to see what he could say to the job;
but the folk that were again him, gae him sic an awfu' throughgaun about
his ri