Part 25 (1/2)

”It is a cruelly severe statute,” said the magistrate to his a.s.sistant, ”and I wish the girl could be taken from under the letter of it. A child may have been born, and it may have been conveyed away while the mother was insensible, or it may have perished for want of that relief which the poor creature herself--helpless, terrified, distracted, despairing, and exhausted--may have been unable to afford to it. And yet it is certain, if the woman is found guilty under the statute, execution will follow.

The crime has been too common, and examples are necessary.”

”But if this other wench,” said the city-clerk, ”can speak to her sister communicating her situation, it will take the case from under the statute.”

”Very true,” replied the Bailie; ”and I will walk out one of these days to St. Leonard's, and examine the girl myself. I know something of their father Deans--an old true-blue Cameronian, who would see house and family go to wreck ere he would disgrace his testimony by a sinful complying with the defections of the times; and such he will probably uphold the taking an oath before a civil magistrate. If they are to go on and flourish with their bull-headed obstinacy, the legislature must pa.s.s an act to take their affirmations, as in the case of Quakers. But surely neither a father nor a sister will scruple in a case of this kind. As I said before, I will go speak with them myself, when the hurry of this Porteous investigation is somewhat over; their pride and spirit of contradiction will be far less alarmed, than if they were called into a court of justice at once.”

”And I suppose Butler is to remain incarcerated?” said the city-clerk.

”For the present, certainly,” said the magistrate. ”But I hope soon to set him at liberty upon bail.”

”Do you rest upon the testimony of that light-headed letter?” asked the clerk.

”Not very much,” answered the Bailie; ”and yet there is something striking about it too--it seems the letter of a man beside himself, either from great agitation, or some great sense of guilt.”

”Yes,” said the town-clerk, ”it is very like the letter of a mad strolling play-actor, who deserves to be hanged with all the rest of his gang, as your honour justly observes.”

”I was not quite so bloodthirsty,” continued the magistrate. ”But to the point, Butler's private character is excellent; and I am given to understand, by some inquiries I have been making this morning, that he did actually arrive in town only the day before yesterday, so that it was impossible he could have been concerned in any previous machinations of these unhappy rioters, and it is not likely that he should have joined them on a suddenty.”

”There's no saying anent that--zeal catches fire at a slight spark as fast as a brunstane match,” observed the secretary. ”I hae kend a minister wad be fair gude-day and fair gude-e'en wi' ilka man in the parochine, and hing just as quiet as a rocket on a stick, till ye mentioned the word abjuration-oath, or patronage, or siclike, and then, whiz, he was off, and up in the air an hundred miles beyond common manners, common sense, and common comprehension.”

”I do not understand,” answered the burgher-magistrate, ”that the young man Butler's zeal is of so inflammable a character. But I will make farther investigation. What other business is there before us?”

And they proceeded to minute investigations concerning the affair of Porteous's death, and other affairs through which this history has no occasion to trace them.

In the course of their business they were interrupted by an old woman of the lower rank, extremely haggard in look, and wretched in her appearance, who thrust herself into the council room.

”What do you want, gudewife?--Who are you?” said Bailie Middleburgh.

”What do I want!” replied she, in a sulky tone--”I want my bairn, or I want naething frae nane o' ye, for as grand's ye are.” And she went on muttering to herself with the wayward spitefulness of age--”They maun hae lords.h.i.+ps and honours, nae doubt--set them up, the gutter-bloods! and deil a gentleman amang them.”--Then again addressing the sitting magistrate, ”Will _your honour_ gie me back my puir crazy bairn?--_His_ honour!--I hae kend the day when less wad ser'd him, the oe of a Campvere skipper.”

”Good woman,” said the magistrate to this shrewish supplicant--”tell us what it is you want, and do not interrupt the court.”

”That's as muckle as till say, Bark, Bawtie, and be dune wi't!--I tell ye,” raising her termagant voice, ”I want my bairn! is na that braid Scots?”

”Who _are_ you?--who is your bairn?” demanded the magistrate.

”Wha am I?--wha suld I be, but Meg Murdockson, and wha suld my bairn be but Magdalen Murdockson?--Your guard soldiers, and your constables, and your officers, ken us weel eneugh when they rive the bits o' duds aff our backs, and take what penny o' siller we hae, and harle us to the Correctionhouse in Leith Wynd, and pettle us up wi' bread and water and siclike sunkets.”

”Who is she?” said the magistrate, looking round to some of his people.

”Other than a gude ane, sir,” said one of the city officers, shrugging his shoulders and smiling.

”Will ye say sae?” said the termagant, her eye gleaming with impotent fury; ”an I had ye amang the Figgat-Whins,* wadna I set my ten talents in your wuzzent face for that very word?” and she suited the word to the action, by spreading out a set of claws resembling those of St. George's dragon on a country sign-post.

* [This was a name given to a tract of sand hillocks extending along the sea-sh.o.r.e from Leith to Portobello, and which at this time were covered with _whin_-bushes or furze.]

”What does she want here?” said the impatient magistrate--”Can she not tell her business, or go away?”

”It's my bairn!--it's Magdalen Murdockson I'm wantin',” answered the beldam, screaming at the highest pitch of her cracked and mistuned voice--”havena I been telling ye sae this half-hour? And if ye are deaf, what needs ye sit c.o.c.kit up there, and keep folk scraughin' t'ye this gate?”

”She wants her daughter, sir,” said the same officer whose interference had given the hag such offence before--”her daughter, who was taken up last night--Madge Wildfire, as they ca' her.”