I must speak my plain mind, Mr. Croftangry. I cannot tell
what innovations in Kirk and State may now be proposed, but our fathers
were friends to both, as they were settled at the glorious Revolution,
and liked a tartan plaid as little as they did a white surplice. I wish
to Heaven, all this tartan fever bode well to the Protestant succession
and the Kirk of Scotland."
"Both too well settled, I hope, in the minds of the subject," said I, "to
be affected by old remembrances, on which we look back as on the portraits
of our ancestors, without recollecting, while we gaze on them, any of the
feuds by which the originals were animated while alive. But most happy
should I be to light upon any topic to supply the place of the Highlands,
Mr. Fairscribe. I have been just reflecting that the theme is becoming a
little exhausted, and your experience may perhaps supply"----
"Ha, ha, ha!--_my_ experience supply!" interrupted Mr. Fairscribe, with
a laugh of derision;--"why, you might as well ask my son James's
experience to supply a case" about thirlage. No, no, my good friend, I
have lived by the law, and in the law, all my life; and when you seek
the impulses that make soldiers desert and shoot their sergeants and
corporals, and Highland drovers dirk English graziers, to prove themselves
men of fiery passions, it is not to a man like me you should come. I could
tell you some tricks of my own trade, perhaps, and a queer story or two of
estates that have been lost and recovered.
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