Like many others of the peripatetic manufacturers of Dunfermline, Duncan Schulebred sold through the country the cloth he fabricated at home; so that, for one half, the winter, of the year, he _sat_, and for the other, the summer, he _travelled_. By the same means and ratio, Duncan Schulebred was one half of the year sober, and the other inebriated; for he could fleece no pot companion in his native town, where he was known; while, throughout the country, he could walk deliberately out of every ale-house on the road, and leave his travelling companions to pay for his drink, in exchange for that society which they had enjoyed. Now, in the course of his journey, this individual had occasion, during the latter end of a summer, to be in Edinburgh, where he usually sold a considerable part of his stock. During the day, he had been in treaty with a person of the name of Andrew Gavin, a pettifogging writer, residing near the Luckenbooths, for the sale of a web of linen, which the latter, like a trout with a bait on a clear day, approached and examined, and looked at and felt, and yet still seemed irresolute in his determination to be caught. The weaver's twinkling eye saw and admired the gudgeon; the linen, to a _safe_ extent, was unrolled, its texture felt with a "miller's thumb," its qualities extolled, and its price wondered at by him who fixed it and smiled inwardly at his profit and the trick by which he realized it. The unwary purchaser, though a man of the law, was at last caught--the bargain was struck, the money paid; and all that remained was, that Duncan Schulebred, in addition to cheating him in the manner to be explained, should, after his usual practice, get drunk at the expense of his customer.