, if they're there o' free will.«
    »A very natural observation, Edie, and many of your betters would make the
same; but it is founded entirely upon ignorance of the feudal system. Hector, be
so good as to attend, unless you are looking out for another -- Ahem!« (Hector
compelled himself to give attention at this hint.) »And you, Edie, it may be
useful to you rerum cognoscere causas. The nature and origin of warrant for
caption is a thing haud alienum a Scoevoloe studiis. - You must know then, once
more, that nobody can be arrested in Scotland for debt.«
    »I haena muckle concern wi' that, Monkbarns,« said the old man, »for naebody
wad trust a bodle to a gaberlunzie.«
    »I pr'ythee, peace, man -- As a compulsitor, therefore, of payment, that
being a thing to which no debtor is naturally inclined, as I have too much
reason to warrant from the experience I have had with my own, - we had first the
letters of four forms, a sort of gentle invitation, by which our sovereign lord
the king, interesting himself, as a monarch should, in the regulation of his
subjects' private affairs, at first by mild exhortation, and afterwards by
letters of more strict enjoinment and more hard compulsion - - What do you see
extraordinary about that bird, Hector? - it's but a seamav.«
    »It's a pictarnie, sir,« said Edie.
    »Well, what an if it were - what does that signify at present? - But I see
you're impatient; so I will waive the letters of four forms, and come to the
modern process of diligence. - You suppose, now, a man's committed to prison
because he cannot pay his debt? Quite otherwise: the truth is, the king is so
good as to interfere at the request of the creditor, and to send the debtor his
royal command to do him justice within a certain time - fifteen days, or six, as
the case may be. Well, the man resists and disobeys: what follows? Why, that he
be lawfully and rightfully declared a rebel to our gracious sovereign, whose
command he has disobeyed, and that by three blasts of a horn at the market-place
of Edinburgh, the metropolis of Scotland. And he is then legally imprisoned, not
on account of any civil debt, but because of his ungrateful contempt of the
royal mandate. What say you