honest man canna fetch sae muckle as a bit anker o' brandy frae Leith to the
Lawnmarket, but he's like to be rubbit o' the very gudes he's bought and paid
for. - Weel, I winna justify Andrew Wilson for pitting hands on what wasna his;
but if he took nae mair than his ain, there's an awfu' difference between that
and the fact this man stands for.«
    »If ye speak about the law,« said Mrs. Howden, »here comes Mr. Saddletree,
that can settle it as weel as ony on the bench.«
    The party she mentioned, a grave elderly person, with a superb periwig,
dressed in a decent suit of sad-coloured clothes, came up as she spoke, and
courteously gave his arm to Miss Grizel Damahoy.
    It may be necessary to mention, that Mr. Bartoline Saddletree kept an
excellent and highly-esteemed shop for harness, saddles, etc. etc., at the sign
of the Golden Nag, at the head of Bess Wynd. His genius, however (as he himself
and most of his neighbours conceived), lay towards the weightier matters of the
law, and he failed not to give frequent attendance upon the pleadings and
arguments of the lawyers and judges in the neighbouring square, where, to say
the truth, he was oftener to be found than would have consisted with his own
emolument; but that his wife, an active painstaking person, could, in his
absence, make an admirable shift to please the customers and scold the
journeymen. This good lady was in the habit of letting her husband take his way,
and go on improving his stock of legal knowledge without interruption; but, as
if in requital, she insisted upon having her own will in the domestic and
commercial departments which he abandoned to her. Now, as Bartoline Saddletree
had a considerable gift of words, which he mistook for eloquence, and conferred
more liberally upon the society in which he lived than was at all times gracious
and acceptable, there went forth a saying, with which wags used sometimes to
interrupt his rhetoric, that, as he had a golden nag at his door, so he had a
grey mare in his shop. This reproach induced Mr. Saddletree, on all occasions,
to assume rather a haughty and stately tone towards his good woman, a
circumstance by which she seemed very little affected, unless he attempted to
exercise any real authority, when she never failed to fly into open rebellion.
But such extremes Bartoline seldom provoked; for, like the gentle King Jamie