s," resumed Saddletree, "is one of
those cases of murder presumptive, that is, a murder of the law's
inferring or construction, being derived from certain _indicia_ or
grounds of suspicion."

"So that," said the good woman, "unless poor Effie has communicated her
situation, she'll be hanged by the neck, if the bairn was still-born, or
if it be alive at this moment?"

"Assuredly," said Saddletree, "it being a statute made by our Sovereign
Lord and Lady, to prevent the horrid delict of bringing forth children in
secret--The crime is rather a favourite of the law, this species of
murther being one of its ain creation."

"Then, if the law makes murders," said Mrs. Saddletree, "the law should
be hanged for them; or if they wad hang a lawyer instead, the country wad
find nae faut."

A summons to their frugal dinner interrupted the farther progress of the
conversation, which was otherwise like to take a turn much less
favourable to the science of jurisprudence and its professors, than Mr.
Bartoline Saddletree, the fond admirer of both, had at its opening
anticipated.

CHAPTER FIFTH.

But up then raise all Edinburgh.
They all rose up by thousands three.
Johnnie Armstrang's _Goodnight._

Butler, on his departure from the sign of the Golden Nag, went in quest
of a friend of his connected with the law, of whom he wished to make
particular inquiries concerning the circumstances in which the
unfortunate young woman mentioned in the last chapter was placed, having,
as the reader has probably already conjectured, reasons much deeper than
those dictated by mere humanity for interesting himself in her fate. He
found the person he sought absent from home, and was equally unfortunate
in one or two other calls which he made upon acquaintances whom he hoped
to interest in her story. But everybody was, for the moment, stark-mad on
the subject of Porteous, and engaged busily in attacking or defending the
measures of Government in reprieving him; and the ardour of dispute had
excited such universal thirst, that half the young lawyers and writers,
together with their very clerks, the class whom Butler was looking after,
had adjourned the debate to some favourite tavern. It was computed by an
experienced arithmetician, that there was as much twopenny ale consumed
on the discussion as would have floated a first-rate man-of-war.

Butler wandered about unt