CHAPTER XVII--THE LAW PLEA



The repair of the kirk was undertaken by contract with William
Plane, the joiner, with whom I was in terms at the time anent the
bigging of a land of houses on my new steading at the town-end. A
most reasonable man in all things he was, and in no concern of my
own had I a better satisfaction than in the house he built for me at
the conjuncture when he had the town's work in the kirk; but there
was at that period among us a certain person, of the name of Nabal
Smeddum, a tobacconist by calling, who, up to this season, had been
regarded but as a droll and comical body at a coothy crack. He was,
in stature, of the lower order of mankind, but endowed with an
inclination towards corpulency, by which he had acquired some show
of a belly, and his face was round, and his cheeks both red and
sleeky. He was, however, in his personalities, chiefly remarkable
for two queer and twinkling little eyes, and for a habitual custom
of licking his lips whenever he said any thing of pith or jocosity,
or thought that he had done so, which was very often the case. In
his apparel, as befitted his trade, he wore a suit of snuff-coloured
cloth, and a brown round-eared wig, that curled close in to his
neck.

Mr Smeddum, as I have related, was in some estimation for his
comicality; but he was a dure hand at an argument, and would not see
the plainest truth when it was not on his side of the debate. No