ide a slight. And it will sound ill in her ears, that
sic a confused mistake suld come to pass, and naebody sae muckle as to be
put into the Tolbooth about it."

"If ye thought that, sir," said the procurator-fiscal, "we could easily
clap into the prison a few blackguards upon suspicion. It will have a
gude active look, and I hae aye plenty on my list, that wadna be a hair
the waur of a week or twa's imprisonment; and if ye thought it no
strictly just, ye could be just the easier wi' them the neist time they
did onything to deserve it; they arena the sort to be lang o' gieing ye
an opportunity to clear scores wi' them on that account."

"I doubt that will hardly do in this case, Mr. Sharpitlaw," returned the
town-clerk; "they'll run their letters,* and be adrift again, before ye
ken where ye are."

* A Scottish form of procedure, answering, in some respects, to the
English Habeas Corpus.

"I will speak to the Lord Provost," said the magistrate, "about
Ratcliffe's business. Mr. Sharpitlaw, you will go with me, and receive
instructions--something may be made too out of this story of Butler's and
his unknown gentleman--I know no business any man has to swagger about in
the King's Park, and call himself the devil, to the terror of honest
folks, who dinna care to hear mair about the devil than is said from the
pulpit on the Sabbath. I cannot think the preacher himsell wad be heading
the mob, though the time has been, they hae been as forward in a bruilzie
as their neighbours."

"But these times are lang by," said Mr. Sharpitlaw. "In my father's time,
there was mair search for silenced ministers about the Bow-head and the
Covenant Close, and all the tents of Kedar, as they ca'd the dwellings o'
the godly in those days, than there's now for thieves and vagabonds in
the Laigh Calton and the back o' the Canongate. But that time's weel by,
an it bide. And if the Bailie will get me directions and authority from
the Provost, I'll speak wi' Daddie Rat mysell; for I'm thinking I'll make
mair out o' him than ye'll do."

Mr. Sharpitlaw, being necessarily a man of high trust, was accordingly
empowered, in the course of the day, to make such arrangements as might
seem in the emergency most advantageous for the Good Town. He went to the
jail accordingly, and saw Ratcliffe in private.

The relative positions of a police-officer and a professed thief bear a
different complexion, according to circumstances. The most obvious simile
of