The Antiquary — Complete

maintain a seditious club?'

'My dear sir,' said the magistrate, catching at the idea, 'you hit my very thoughts! How fortunate should I be if I could become the humble means of sifting such a matter to the bottom!—Don't you think we had better call out the volunteers, and put them on duty?'

'Not just yet, while podagra deprives them of an essential member of their body. But will you let me examine Ochiltree?'

'Certainly; but you'll make nothing of him. He gave me distinctly to understand he knew the danger of a judicial declaration on the part of an accused person, which, to say the truth, has hanged many an honester man than he is.'

'Well, but, Bailie,' continued Oldbuck, 'you have no objection to let me try him?'

'None in the world, Monkbarns. I hear the sergeant below—I'll rehearse the manual in the meanwhile. Baby, carry my gun and bayonet down to the room below—it makes less noise there when we ground arms.' And so exit the martial magistrate, with his maid behind him bearing his weapons.

'A good squire that wench for a gouty champion,' observed Oldbuck.— 'Hector, my lad, hook on, hook on —Go with him, boy—keep him employed, man, for half-an-hour or so—butter him with some warlike terms— praise his dress and address.'

Captain M'Intyre, who, like many of his profession, looked down with infinite scorn on those citizen soldiers who had assumed arms without any professional title to bear them, rose with great reluctance, observing that he should not know what to say to Mr. Littlejohn; and that to see an old gouty shop-keeper attempting the exercise and duties of a private soldier, was really too ridiculous.

'It may be so, Hector,' said the Antiquary, who seldom agreed with any person in the immediate proposition which was laid down—'it may possibly be so in this and some other instances; but at present the country resembles the suitors in a small-debt court, where parties plead in person, for lack of cash to retain the professed heroes of the bar. I am sure in the one case we never regret the want of the acuteness and eloquence of the lawyers; and so, I hope, in the other, we may manage to make shift with our hearts and muskets, though we shall lack some of the discipline of you martinets.'

'I have no objection, I am sure, sir, that the whole world should fight if they please, if they will but allow me to be quiet,' said Hector, rising with dogged reluctance.

'Yes, you are a very quiet personage indeed,' said his uncle, 'whose ardour for quarrelling cannot pass so much as a poor phoca sleeping upon the beach!'

But Hector, who saw which way the conversation was tending, and hated all allusions to the foil he had sustained from the fish, made his escape before the Antiquary concluded the sentence.

CHAPTER SEVENTEENTH.

Well, well, at worst, 'tis neither theft nor coinage,
Granting I knew all that you charge me with.
What though the tomb hath borne a second birth,
And given the wealth to one that knew not on't,
Yet fair exchange was never robbery,
Far less pure bounty—

Old Play.

The Antiquary, in order to avail himself of the permission given him to question the accused party, chose rather to go to the apartment in which Ochiltree was detained, than to make the examination appear formal by bringing him again into the magistrate's office. He found the old man seated by a window which looked out on the sea; and as he gazed on that prospect, large tears found their way, as if unconsciously, to his eye, and from thence trickled down his cheeks and white beard. His features were, nevertheless, calm and composed, and his whole posture and mien indicated patience and resignation. Oldbuck had approached him without being observed, and roused him out of his musing by saying kindly, 'I am sorry, Edie, to see you so much cast down about this matter.'

The mendicant started, dried his eyes very hastily with the sleeve of his gown, and endeavouring to recover his usual tone of indifference and jocularity, answered, but with a voice more tremulous than usual, 'I might weel hae judged, Monkbarns, it was you, or the like o' you, was coming in to disturb me—for it's ae great advantage o' prisons and courts o' justice, that ye may greet your een out an ye like, and nane o' the folk that's concerned about them will ever ask you what it's for.'

'Well, Edie,' replied Oldbuck, 'I hope your present cause of distress is not so bad but it may be removed.'

'And I had hoped, Monkbarns,' answered the mendicant, in a tone of reproach, 'that ye had ken'd me better than to think that this bit trifling trouble o' my ain wad bring tears into my auld een, that hae seen far different kind o' distress.—Na, na!—But here's been the puir lass, Caxon's daughter, seeking comfort, and has gotten unco little— there's been nae speerings o' Taffril's gunbrig since the last gale; and folk report on the key that a king's ship had struck on the Reef of Rattray, and a' hands lost—God forbid! for as sure as you live, Monkbarns, the puir lad Lovel, that ye liked sae weel, must have perished.'

'God forbid indeed!' echoed the Antiquary, turning pale—'I would rather Monkbarns House were on fire. My poor dear friend and coadjutor! I will down to the quay instantly.'

'I'm sure yell learn naething mair than I hae tauld ye, sir,' said Ochiltree, 'for the officer-folk here were very civil (that is, for the like o' them), and lookit up ae their letters and authorities, and could throw nae light on't either ae way or another.'

'It can't be true! it shall not be true!' said the Antiquary, 'And I won't believe it if it were!—Taffril's an excellent sea man, and Lovel (my poor Lovel!) has all the qualities of a safe and pleasant companion by land or by sea—one, Edie, whom, from the ingenuousness of his disposition, I would choose, did I ever go a sea-voyage (which I never do, unless across the ferry), fragilem mecum solvere phaselum, to be the companion of my risk, as one against whom the elements could nourish no vengeance. No, Edie, it is not, and cannot be true—it is a fiction of the idle jade Rumour, whom I wish hanged with her trumpet about her neck, that serves only with its screech-owl tones to fright honest folks out of their senses.—Let me know how you got into this scrape of your own.'

'Are ye axing me as a magistrate, Monkbarns, or is it just for your ain satisfaction!'

'For my own satisfaction solely,' replied the Antiquary.

'Put up your pocket-book and your keelyvine pen then, for I downa speak out an ye hae writing materials in your hands—they're a scaur to unlearned folk like me—Od, ane o' the clerks in the neist room will clink down, in black and white, as muckle as wad hang a man, before ane kens what he's saying.'

Monkbarns complied with the old man's humour, and put up his memorandum-book.

Edie then went with great frankness through the part of the story already known to the reader, informing the Antiquary of the scene which he had witnessed between Dousterswivel and his patron in the ruins of St. Ruth, and frankly confessing that he could not resist the opportunity of decoying the adept once more to visit the tomb of Misticot, with the purpose of taking a comic revenge upon him for his quackery. He had easily persuaded Steenie, who was a bold thoughtless young fellow, to engage in the frolic along with him, and the jest had been inadvertently carried a great deal farther than was designed. Concerning the pocket-book, he explained that he