Next momin' I gaed to the coort wi' Maister Fleming the writer. It wis a sad, sad sicht to see sae mony braw, weel-put-on, bright-faced laddies ranged in front o' the bar o' justice. The judge had a warm side to the prisoners, for he gied a sair hecklin' to some o' the witnesses; but when I heard three constables, a licht porter, and a nicht watchman, giein' their sworn testimony that the prisoner, William Warstle, had been seen to fling a rape ower the haberdasher's sign—the gilt lamb —and that he and anither, wha stood near him in the dock,
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had pu'd the different ends o' the rape till the thing cam' doon on the pavement wi' a clash, I couldna but feel that the sentence—twa guineas or fourteen days—wis, on the whole, reasonable and just.[1]
Weel, weel, thinks I, as I paid doon the siller, this beats a' the student laddies ever I fed. This bursary business is gaun to cost me a bonny penny or a's dune. It gied me something to think aboot, and for the young and rising generation
- ↑ This sentence I thought was an exceedingly mild one, considering the gravity of the offence, but the Fiscal was a friend of my own and knowing, as he did, that the punishment, the videlicet, the paying of the fine, would fall on my client, he did not press for a heavy penalty.—Ed.
