sed note Mr.
Alan Fairford must be pleased to consider as his first professional
emolument; and she who sends it hopes it will be the omen of unbounded
success, though the fee comes from a hand so unknown as that of 'GREEN
MANTLE'.

A bank-note of L20 was the enclosure, and the whole incident left me
speechless with astonishment. I am not able to read over the beginning
of my own letter, which forms the introduction to this extraordinary
communication. I only know that, though mixed with a quantity of foolery
(God knows very much different from my present feelings), it gives an
account sufficiently accurate, of the mysterious person from whom this
letter comes, and that I have neither time nor patience to separate the
absurd commentary from the text, which it is so necessary you should
know.

Combine this warning, so strangely conveyed, with the caution impressed
on you by your London correspondent, Griffiths, against your visiting
England--with the character of your Laird of the Solway Lakes--with the
lawless habits of the people on that frontier country, where warrants
are not easily executed owing to the jealousy entertained by either
country of the legal interference of the other; remember, that even Sir
John Fielding said to my father that he could never trace a rogue beyond
the Briggend of Dumfries--think that the distinctions of Whig and
Tory, Papist and Protestant, still keep that country in a loose and
comparatively lawless state--think of all this, my dearest Darsie, and
remember that, while at this Mount Sharon of yours, you are residing
with a family actually menaced with forcible interference, and who,
while their obstinacy provokes violence, are by principle bound to
abstain from resistance.

Nay, let me tell you, professionally, that the legality of the mode of
fishing practised by your friend Joshua is greatly doubted by our
best lawyers; and that, if the stake-nets be considered as actually an
unlawful obstruction raised in the channel of the estuary, an assembly
of persons who shall proceed, VIA FACTI, to pull dawn and destroy them,
would not, in the eye of the law, be esteemed guilty of a riot. So, by
remaining where you are, YOU are likely to be engaged in a quarrel with
which you have nothing to do, and thus to enable your enemies, whoever
these may be, to execute, amid the confusion of a general hubbub,
whatever designs they may have against your personal safety.
Black-fishers, poachers, and sm