t day, Will,
leaving his friends at the inn, repaired to that seat of the law and
learning of Scotland, where the "hail fifteen" sat in grim array,
munching, with their toothless jaws, the thousand scraps of Latin
law-maxims (borrowed from the Roman and feudal systems) which then
ruled the principles of judicial proceedings in Scotland.

Planting himself in one of the litigants' benches--a line of seats in
front of the semicircle where the fifteen Lords sat--the Liddesdale
riever took a careful survey of all the wonders of that old laboratory
of law. The first objects that attracted his attention, were, of course,
the imposing semicircular line of judges, no fewer than fifteen (almost
sufficient for a small standing army for puny Scotland in those days),
who, wigged and robed, sat and nodded and grinned, and munched their
chops in each other's faces, with a most extraordinary regularity of
mummery, which yielded great amusement to the stalworth riever of the
Borders. Their appearance in the long gowns, with sleeves down to the
hands, wigs whose lappets fell on their breasts, displaying many a line
of crucified curl, and white cambric cravats falling from below their
gaucy double-chins on their bosoms, suggested at once the appellation of
lurdons, often applied to them in those days, and now vivid in the fancy
of the staring Borderer, whose wild and lawless life was so strangely
contrasted with that of the drowsy, effeminate-looking individuals who
sat before him. He understood very little of their movements, which had
all the regularity and ceremony of a raree-show. One individual (the
macer) cried out, at intervals, with a cracked voice, some words he
could not understand; but the moment the sound had rung through the
raftered hall, another species of wigged and robed individuals
(advocates) came forward, and spoke a strange mixture of English and
Latin, which Will could not follow; and, when they had finished, the
whole fifteen looked at each other, and then began, one after another,
but often two or three at a time, to speak, and nod, and shake their
wigs, as if they had been set agoing by some winding-up process on the
part of the advocates. Not one word of all this did Will understand;
and, indeed, he cared nothing for such mummery, but ever and anon fixed
his keen eye on the face of the middle senator, with an expression that
certainly never could have conveyed the intelligence that that rough
country-looking indi