whole multitude dropped the dirt and stones out of their hands, and,
turning their backs, flew into doors and closes, and were skailed
before we knew where we were. It is not to be told the laud and
admiration that I got for my ability in this business; for the major
was so well pleased to have been saved from a battle, that, at my
suggestion, he wrote an account of the whole business to the
commander-in-chief, assuring him that, but for me, and my great
weight and authority in the town, nobody could tell what the issue
might have been; so that the Lord Advocate, to whom the report was
shown by the general, wrote me a letter of thanks in the name of the
government; and I, although not provost, was thus seen and believed
to be a person of the foremost note and consideration in the town.

But although the mob was dispersed, as I have related, the
consequences did not end there; for, the week following, none of the
farmers brought in their victual; and there was a great lamentation
and moaning in the market-place when, on the Friday, not a single
cart from the country was to be seen, but only Simon Laidlaw's, with
his timber caps and luggies; and the talk was, that meal would be
half-a-crown the peck. The grief, however, of the business wasna
visible till the Saturday--the wonted day for the poor to seek their
meat--when the swarm of beggars that came forth was a sight truly
calamitous. Many a decent auld woman that had patiently eiked out
the slender thread of a weary life with her wheel, in privacy, her
scant and want known only to her Maker, was seen going from door to
door with the salt tear in her e'e, and looking in the face of the
pitiful, being as yet unacquainted with the language of beggary; but
the worst sight of all was two bonny bairns, dressed in their best,
of a genteel demeanour, going from house to house like the hungry
babes in the wood: nobody kent who they were, nor whar they came