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Updated: May 9, 2025
I did, to be sure, think you had an eye to her more than to me, in what you said: but if you had, I am sure you would tell me so fairly." James was at a loss to comprehend how the advice that he gave concerning Admiral Tipsey and the smugglers could relate to Miss Cleghorn, except so far as it related to her father. He waited in silence for a farther explanation.
"Ninety-five firkins fourteen gallons three quarts. You see, it's quite simple," said Mr. Cleghorn, the arithmetic master.
During the eighteen months that James had spent in Mr. Cleghorn's shop, he never gave his master the slightest reason to complain of him; on the contrary, this young man made his employer's interests his own; and, consequently, completely deserved his confidence. It was not, however, always easy to deal with Mr. Cleghorn; for he dreaded to be flattered, yet could not bear to be contradicted.
Hence he was not the man to prize a Tuscan well dug in the fourteenth century, cleaned perhaps never, and gradually filled to the brim with what the forwardlooking past benightedly took for rubbish. So when Cleghorn and Webb made him an overture for the right to clean the well, he had genially replied, "Why, go ahead, boys, and enjoy yourselves.
"You don't know, then," continued Mr. Cleghorn, "that Admiral Tipsey, as he calls himself, is able to leave his nephew, young Raikes, more than I can leave my daughter?
He told her that the law had remedies for losses of deeds; and she accordingly consulted a legal gentleman of the name of Cleghorn. The result was not favourable. It appeared that Mr. Ainslie denied that there was any copy or scroll of the will, through the means of which it might have been "set up," by what is called a proving of the tenor.
The magistrate from whom James first heard of his extravagance happened to have a son at Oxford, who gave him this intelligence: he confirmed all he had said to Mr. Cleghorn, who trembled at the danger to which he had exposed his daughter. The match with young Raikes was immediately broken off; and all connexion with Admiral Tipsey and the smugglers was for ever dissolved by Mr. Cleghorn.
"Did not I tell you, young man, I carried that under my waistcoat which would make a fool stare? The lace that's on the floor, to say nothing of the cambric, is worth full twice the sum for which you shall have it, Cleghorn. Good night. I'll call again to-morrow, to settle our affairs; but don't let your young man here shut the door, as he did to-day, in the admiral's face.
The clumsy movement loosened a handful of shards which went clattering down; the great stone slid, caught on the parapet, and hung once more in uncertain oscillation. Profanity unrestrained transpired from the mouth of the well. It was a tremulous Cleghorn that sent down the bucket and reeled up an irate and vociferous Webb.
Hugh Cleghorn had been Professor of Civil History in St. Andrews for ten years, afterwards becoming tutor to the Earl of Home, and subsequently employed by our Government in various foreign missions. A glimpse of his work is obtainable in Southey's Life, of Dr. Andrew Bell. Mr. Cleghorn died in 1833, aged 83.
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