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In short, out of what passed that night, on the Monday following Mr Pittle and Miss Lizy were married; and by my dexterity, together with the able help I had in Bailie M'Lucre, he was in due season placed and settled in the parish; and the next year more than fifty acres of the town-moor were inclosed on a nine hundred and ninety-nine years' tack at an easy rate between me and the bailie, he paying the half of the expense of the ditching and rooting out of the whins; and it was acknowledged by every one that saw it, that there had not been a greater improvement for many years in all the country side.
At the first, I pretended that really, as was the truth, I had no knowledge of what were the duties of dean of guild; but after some fleeching from the other councillors, I consented to have the office, as it were, forced upon me; so I was made dean of guild, and Mr M'Lucre the new bailie.
I guessed in this that he had a vista in view of the tacks and leases that were belyve to fall in, and I said "Nothing can be more reasonable, Mr M'Lucre; for the office of dean of guild must be a very fashious one, to folks like me, no skilled in its particularities; and I'm sure I'll be right glad and willing to give it up, when we hae got our present turn served.
From the time that I had been dean of guild, I was sensible of a considerable increase of my worldly means and substance; and although Bailie M'Lucre played me a soople trick at the election, by the inordinate sale and roup of his potatoe-rig, the which tried me, as I do confess, and nettled me with disappointment; yet things, in other respects, went so well with me that, about the eighty-eight, I began to put forth my hand again into public affairs, endowed both with more vigour and activity than it was in the first period of my magisterial functions.
Standing under the blessed influence of the time by myself at my shop- door, who should I see passing along the crown of the causey, but Mr M'Lucre himself and with a countenance knotted with care, little in unison with the sultry indolence of that sunny day. "Whar awa sae fast, dean o' guild?" quo' I to him; and he stopped his wide stepping, for he was a long spare man, and looting in his gait.
Having convinced the bailie that Mr Pittle had already, as it were, a sort of infeoffment in the kirk, I called in the evening on my old predecessor in the guildry, Bailie M'Lucre, who was not a hand to be so easily dealt with; but I knew his inclinations, and therefore I resolved to go roundly to work with him.
While, therefore, I think it has been of a great advantage to the public to have survived that method of administration in which the like of Bailie M'Lucre was engendered, I would not have it understood that I think the men who held the public trusts in those days a whit less honest than the men of my own time.
However, to make a long tale short, Bailie M'Lucre was, by means of this device, chosen delegate, seemingly against my side.
Mr M'Lucre, going to London, as I have intimated in the foregoing chapter, remained there, absent from us altogether about the space of six weeks; and when he came home, he was plainly an altered man, being sometimes very jocose, and at other times looking about him as if he had been haunted by some ill thing.
The first thing was, to persuade those that were on the side of the old member to elect Mr M'Lucre for delegate, he being, as we had concerted, openly declared for that interest, and the benefit to be gotten thereby having, by use and wont, been at an established and regular rate.
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