mair about them than I do, if they make sic a report of them."

* [_Close-head,_ the entrance of a blind alley.]

"I tell ye, woman," said Saddletree, in high dudgeon, "that ye ken
naething about these matters. In Sir William Wallace's days there was nae
man pinned down to sic a slavish wark as a saddler's, for they got ony
leather graith that they had use for ready-made out of Holland."

"Well," said Butler, who was, like many of his profession, something of a
humorist and dry joker, "if that be the case, Mr. Saddletree, I think we
have changed for the better; since we make our own harness, and only
import our lawyers from Holland."

"It's ower true, Mr. Butler," answered Bartoline, with a sigh; "if I had
had the luck--or rather, if my father had had the sense to send me to
Leyden and Utrecht to learn the Substitutes and Pandex."

"You mean the Institutes--Justinian's Institutes, Mr. Saddletree?" said
Butler.

"Institutes and substitutes are synonymous words, Mr. Butler, and used
indifferently as such in deeds of tailzie, as you may see in Balfour's
Practiques, or Dallas of St. Martin's Styles. I understand these things
pretty weel, I thank God but I own I should have studied in Holland."

"To comfort you, you might not have been farther forward than you are
now, Mr. Saddletree," replied Mr. Butler; "for our Scottish advocates are
an aristocratic race. Their brass is of the right Corinthian quality, and
_Non cuivis contigit adire Corinthum_--Aha, Mr. Saddletree?"

"And aha, Mr. Butler," rejoined Bartoline, upon whom, as may be well
supposed, the jest was lost, and all but the sound of the words, "ye said
a gliff syne it was _quivis,_ and now I heard ye say _cuivis_ with my ain
ears, as plain as ever I heard a word at the fore-bar."

"Give me your patience, Mr. Saddletree, and I'll explain the discrepancy
in three words," said Butler, as pedantic in his own department, though
with infinitely more judgment and learning, as Bartoline was in his
self-assumed profession of the law--"Give me your patience for a
moment--You'll grant that the nominative case is that by which a person or
thing is nominated or designed, and which may be called the primary case,
all others being formed from it by alterations of the termination in the
learned languages, and by prepositions in our modern Babylonian
jargons--You'll grant me that, I suppose, Mr. Saddletree?"

"I dinna ken whether I will or no--_ad avisandum,_ ye ken--naebo