loaded coal-carts came in at the other, and there was hardly room
for my lord to pass them. What was to be done? His lordship could
not turn back, and the coal-carts were in no less perplexity. Every
body was out of doors to see and to help; when, in trying to get his
lordship's carriage over the top of a midden, the horses gave a
sudden loup, and couped the coach, and threw my lord, head foremost,
into the very scent-bottle of the whole commodity, which made him go
perfect mad, and he swore like a trooper that he would get an act of
parliament to put down the nuisance--the which now ripened in the
course of this year into the undertaking of the trust-road.

His lordship, being in a woeful plight, left the carriage and came
to the manse, till his servant went to the castle for a change for
him; but he could not wait nor abide himself: so he got the lend of
my best suit of clothes, and was wonderful jocose both with Mrs
Balwhidder and me, for he was a portly man, and I but a thin body,
and it was really a droll curiosity to see his lordship clad in my
garments.

Out of this accident grew a sort of a neighbourliness between that
Lord Eaglesham and me; so that when Andrew Lanshaw, the brother that
was of the first Mrs Balwhidder, came to think of going to India, I
wrote to my lord for his behoof, and his lordship got him sent out
as a cadet, and was extraordinary discreet to Andrew when he went up
to London to take his passage, speaking to him of me as if I had
been a very saint, which the Searcher of Hearts knows I am far from
thinking myself.

But to return to the making of the trust-road, which, as I have
said, turned the town inside out. It was agreed among the heritors,