Hickery, I'm sure ye hae nae need to speer that!"

The insinuation set up his birses; but she bamboozled him with her
banter, and raised such a laugh against him, that he was fairly
driven from the council room, and I was myself obliged to let her
go, without exacting the fine.

Who would have thought that this affair was to prove to me the means
of an easy riddance of Mr Hickery? But so it turned out; for
whether or not there was any foundation for the traffickings with
him which she pretended, he never could abide to hear the story
alluded to, which, when I discerned, I took care, whenever he showed
any sort of inclination to molest the council with his propugnacity,
to joke him about his bonny sweetheart, "the Tappit-hen," and he
instantly sang dumb, and quietly slipped away; by which it may be
seen how curiously events come to pass, since, out of the very first
cause of his thwarting me in the lamps, I found, in process of time,
a way of silencing him far better than any sort of truth or reason.



CHAPTER XXVIII--THE SECOND CROP OF VOLUNTEERS



I have already related, at full length, many of the particulars
anent the electing of the first set of volunteers; the which, by
being germinated partly under the old system of public intromission,
was done with more management and slight of art than the second.
This, however, I will ever maintain, was not owing to any greater