Most fortunately for my family in this matter, it so happened that, by paying in half-a-crown a-year, I was a regular member of a society for prosecuting all whom it might concern, that dabbled with foul fingers in the sinful and lawless trade of thievery, breaking the eighth commandment at no allowance, and drawing on their heads not only the passing punishments of this world, by way of banishment to Botany Bay, or hanging at the Luckenbooths, but the threatened vengeance of one that will last for ever and ever. Accordingly, putting on my hat about nine o'clock, or thereabouts, when the breakfast things were removing from the bit table, I poppit out, in the first and foremost instance, to take a vizzy of the depredation the flames had made in our neighbourhood. Losh keep us all, what a spectacle of wreck and ruination! The roof was clean off and away, as if a thunderbolt from heaven had knocked it down through the two floors, carrying every thing before it like a perfect whirlwind. Nought were standing but black, bare walls, a perfect picture of desolation; some with the bit pictures on nails still hanging up where the rooms were like; and others with old coats hanging on pins; and empty bottles in boles, and so on. Indeed, Jacob Glowr, who was standing by my side with his specs on, could see as plain as a pikestaff, a tea-kettle still on the fire, in the hearth-place of one of the gable garrets, where Miss Jenny Withershins lived, but happened luckily, at the era of the conflagration, to be away to Prestonpans, on a visit to some of her far-away cousins, providentially for her safety, greviously, at that very time, smitten with the sciatics. Having satisfied my eyes with a daylight view of the terrible devastation, I went away leisurely up the street with my hands in my breeches-pockets, comparing the scene in my mind with the downfall of Babylon the Great, and Sodom and Gomorrah, and Tyre and Sidon, and Jerusalem, and all the lave of the great towns that had fallen to decay, according to the foretelling of the sacred prophets, until I came to the door of Donald Gleig, the head of the Thief Society, to whom I related, from beginning to end, the whole business of the hen-stealing. 'Od he was a mettle bodie of a creature; far north, Aberdeen-awa like, and looking at two sides of a halfpenny; but, to give the devil his due, in this instance he behaved to me like a gentleman. Not only did Donald send through the drum in the course of half an hour, offering a reward for the apprehension of the offenders of three guineas, names concealed, but he got a warrant granted to Francie Deep, the sherry-officer, to make search in the houses of several suspicious persons.