I sat down, as much out of sight of all parties as I could, and listened to the dialogue which followed--a dialogue how much more interesting to me than any I could have conceived, in which Peter Peebles was to be one of the dramatis personae!
‘Is it here where ye sell the warrants--the fugies, ye ken?’ said Peter.
‘Hey--eh--what!’ said Justice Foxley; ‘what the devil does the fellow mean?--What would you have a warrant for?’
‘It is to apprehend a young lawyer that is IN MEDITATIONE FUGAE; for he has ta’en my memorial and pleaded my cause, and a good fee I gave him, and as muckle brandy as he could drink that day at his father’s house--he loes the brandy ower weel for sae youthful a creature.’
‘And what has this drunken young dog of a lawyer done to you, that you are come to me--eh--ha? Has he robbed you? Not unlikely if he be a lawyer--eh--Nick--ha?’ said Justice Foxley.
‘He has robbed me of himself, sir,’ answered Peter; ‘of his help, comfort, aid, maintenance, and assistance, whilk, as a counsel to a client, he is bound to yield me RATIONE OFFICII--that is it, ye see. He has pouched my fee, and drucken a mutchkin of brandy, and now he’s ower the march, and left my cause, half won half lost--as dead a heat as e’er was run ower the back-sands. Now, I was advised by some cunning laddies that are used to crack a bit law wi’ me in the House, that the best thing I could do was to take heart o’ grace and set out after him; so I have taken post on my ain shanks, forby a cast in a cart, or the like. I got wind of him in Dumfries, and now I have run him ower to the English side, and I want a fugie warrant against him.’
How did my heart throb at this information, dearest Alan! Thou art near me then, and I well know with what kind purpose; thou hast abandoned all to fly to my assistance; and no wonder that, knowing thy friendship and faith, thy sound sagacity and persevering disposition, ‘my bosom’s lord should now sit lightly on his throne’; that gaiety should almost involuntarily hover on my pen; and that my heart should beat like that of a general, responsive to the drums of his advancing ally, without whose help the battle must have been lost.
I did not suffer myself to be startled by this joyous surprise, but continued to bend my strictest attention to what followed among this singular party. That Poor Peter Peebles had been put on this wildgoose chase by some of his juvenile advisers in the Parliament House, he himself had intimated; but he spoke with much confidence, and the Justice, who seemed to have some secret apprehension of being put to trouble in the matter, and, as sometimes occurs on the English frontier, a jealousy lest the superior acuteness of their northern neighbours might overreach their own simplicity, turned to his clerk with a perplexed countenance.