"Troth, he put a parcel--a sma' parcel, under my charge, and he
gave me some siller, and desired me to get him half a dozen ruffled
sarks, and Peg Pasley's in bands wi' them e'en now--they may serve
him to gang up the Lawnmarket I in, the scoundrel!" [*The
procession of the criminals to the gallows of old took that
direction, moving, as the schoolboy rhyme had it, Up the
Lawnmarket, Down the West Bow, Up the lang ladder, And down the
little tow.] Mr. Glossin then demanded to see the packet, but here
mine hostess demurred.
"She didna ken--she wad not say but justice should take its course
but when a thing, was trusted to ane in her way, doubtless they
were responsible--but she suld cry in Deacon Bearcliff, and if Mr.
Glossin liked to tak an inventar o' the property, and gie her a
receipt before the Deacon--or, what she wad like muckle better, an
it could, be scaled up and left in Deacon Bearclift's hands, it wad
mak her mind easy--She was for naething but justice on a' sides."
Mrs. Mac-Candlish's natural sagacity and acquired suspicion being
inflexible, Glossin sent for Deacon Bearcliff, to speak "anent the
villain that had shot Mr. Charles Hazlewood." The Deacon
accordingly made his appearance, with his wig awry, owing to the
hurry with which, at this summons of the Justice, he had exchanged
it for the Kilmarnock cap with which he usually attended his
customers. Mrs. MacCandlish then produced the parcel deposited with
her by Brown, in which was found the gipsy's purse. On perceiving
the value of the miscellaneous contents, Mrs. Mac-Candlish
internally congratulated herself upon the precautions she had taken
before delivering them up to Glossin, while he, with an appearance
of disinterested candour, was the first to propose they should be
properly inventoried, and deposited with Deacon Bearcliff, until
they should be sent to the Crown Office. "He did not" he observed,
"like to be personally responsible for articles which seemed of
considerable value, and had doubtless been acquired by the most
nefarious practices."
He then examined the paper in which the purse had been wrapt up. It
was the back of a letter addressed to V. Brown, Esquire, but the
rest of the address was torn away. The landlady,--now as eager to
throw light upon the criminal's escape as she had formerly been
desirous of withholding it, for the miscellaneous contents of the
purse argued strongly to her mind that all was not right,--Mrs.
Mac-Candlish, I say, now gave Glossin to understand, that her
postilion and hostler had both seen the stranger upon the ice that
day when young Hazlewood was wounded.
Our reader's old acquaintance, Jock Jabos, was first summoned, and
admitted frankly that he had seen and conversed upon the ice that
morning with a stranger, who, he understood, had lodged at the
Gordon Arms the night before.
"What turn did your conversation take?" said Glossin.
"Turn?--ou, we turned nae gate at a', but just keepit straight
forward upon the ice like."
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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