It is always to be remembered that all these moral wonders took place in very quick succession, and only a few weeks pass until we arrive at the waifs. The actors had come to see that they had a great stage to perform on, and supplied as well with innumerable objects. They had only to look a few yards to the west, up Portsburgh, or to the east, up the Grassmarket and Cowgate, to be certain that "a ten pounds," all prepared, was walking or staggering as if every roll to a side offered to be one into their arms. They had thus reason, if they had been of a philosophical habit,--and one had the poetry of sentiment--to thank the great genius Society for his injustice to his own members. And what an extraordinary injustice it appears, when we consider that the high head of Wealth is upheld by the tax of respect imposed upon the poor and the humble! If there were no inferiors to witness a man's greatness, he would be great no more; and yet those who are the soil from which this moral grandness springs are left to rot, as if the more it approached to compost the ranker would be the tribute to his mightiness: so, without abating our horror of these men, we cannot altogether forget that the sufferers in most instances were cast away by Mammon to be in turn immolated to Mammon. They had in short a bank--Heaven knows, not of "elegance"--upon which they could pass a draft when they chose; nor was it forged--they were themselves the drawers, and the money seemed to belong to no one; so careless at that time--it is, we hope, different now--was society of those whom it was bound to look after and protect. So money was again needed, and Burke was to pass the draft, because perhaps his companion thought that as there is (of course) honour among thieves, so fair play must be esteemed a jewel among manslayers. And here the strange circumstance occurred, in the midst of all these strange things, that his draft was to be endorsed _by a constable_. He had been among his dear friends in the Canongate,--and a man or a woman had now a value for him which a short time before he never dreamt of,--thinking of how he could make some of them more dear to him than they seemed to be to themselves, when his attention was directed to a poor unfortunate, steeped in poverty and drink, in the hands of a police officer. Mixing with the crowd, he went up to the officer, and, with much apparent sympathy, interfered for one who had no home and no friends to care for her. He would furnish that home, at least for a time, and be that friend. The poor woman, like some of the others who had wondered that they should become objects of interest, looked at him as one may be supposed to do who has considered herself past the hope of man's charity. Some of the crowd, struck with the offer, backed the sympathiser, and the policeman, considering for a little, at last consented, giving her up to the kind friend,--no other than a philanthropist of the humbler order, but perhaps not the less