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"No, no, landlord," answered a strong deep voice behind him, "it's e'en because your English gaugers and supervisors,* that you have sent down benorth the Tweed, have taen up the trade of thievery over the heads of the native professors." * The introduction of gaugers, supervisors, and examiners, was one of the great complaints of the Scottish nation, though a natural consequence of the Union.
Sharpitlaw, I'll be frank wi' ye; Robertson is rather a cut abune me a wild deevil he was, and mony a daft prank he played; but except the Collector's job that Wilson led him into, and some tuilzies about run goods wi' the gaugers and the waiters, he never did onything that came near our line o' business." "Umph! that's singular, considering the company he kept."
Sharpitlaw, I'll be frank wi' ye; Robertson is rather a cut abune me a wild deevil he was, and mony a daft prank he played; but except the Collector's job that Wilson led him into, and some tuilzies about run goods wi' the gaugers and the waiters, he never did onything that came near our line o' business." "Umph! that's singular, considering the company he kept."
"Ye'll lick where that lay, McKelvie, ye ye maker of meats for sailors," and the sweat rolled off his brow, and his voice was a skirl of rage. McKelvie grabbed a horse-pistol from among his kegs. "Ye hound, I'll put a hole in ye that will be hurrying the gaugers tae fill wi' siller," and as quick as light he levelled the pistol and drew the trigger.
Often she interrupted herself, to express her regret that "my lord did not eat; that the Master was pyking a bare bane; that, to be sure, there was naething there fit to set before their honours; that Lord Allan, rest his saul, used to like a pouthered guse, and said it was Latin for a tass o' brandy; that the brandy came frae France direct; for, for a' the English laws and gaugers, the Wolf's Hope brigs hadna forgotten the gate to Dunkirk."
The most sporting characters among the nobility and gentry of the country, fighting-peers, fire-eaters, snuff-candle squires, members of the hell-fire and jockey clubs, gaugers, gentlemen tinners, bluff yeomen, laborers, cudgel-players, parish pugilists, men of renown within a district of ten square miles, all jostled each other in hurrying to see, and if possible to have speech of, the Dead Boxer.
McKinnon was first in that long race and I next to him, for Dan would not let me out of his sight lest I should lag behind and get rough handling, although indeed, except the gaugers would yelp questions at me which I might not find easy to answer, there was little I had to fear, but it was always in Dan's mind that he had the charge of me.
Our chief misfortune in this year was a revival of that wicked mother of many mischiefs, the smuggling trade, which concerned me greatly; but it was not allowed to it to make any thing like a permanent stay among us, though in some of the neighbouring parishes, its ravages, both in morals and property, were very distressing, and many a mailing was sold to pay for the triumphs of the cutters and gaugers; for the government was by this time grown more eager, and the war caused the king's ships to be out and about, which increased the trouble of the smugglers, whose wits in their turn were thereby much sharpened.
The business of an extraordinary convention of the Estates of the Realm was not to do the ordinary work of Parliaments, to regulate the fees of masters in Chancery, and to provide against the exactions of gaugers, but to put right the great machine of government.
The lass McKinnon, with the bonny boyish face, stooped to pick up her shawl, and Gilchrist was jumping and shouting. "A bonny catch," he cried "a bonny catch," and at that the boyish lass straightened herself. "The boats ahoy," she cried, "ahoy, the boat; the gaugers are on us." "Stop the bitch," screamed Gilchrist, and sprang at the lass with his fist raised.
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