their discretion as seconds, or belli judices, deemed it better
that we should keep a still sough, and that Sir Hew should never be
informed concerning the cause of his discomfiture. This resolution
we kept, and Sir Hew wore, till the day of his late lamented
decease, a bullet among the seals of his watch, he being persuaded
by Strathtyrum that it had been extracted from his brain-pan, which
certainly was of the thickest. But this was all a bam, or bite,
among young men, and a splore to laugh over by our three selves,
nor would I have it to go abroad now that Sir Hew is dead, as being
prejudicial to the memory of a worthy man, and an honourable family
connected with our own. Wherefore I pray you keep a still sough
hereanent, as you love me, who remain--Your loving good father,

BRADWARDINE.



APPENDIX



Note on Letter of Mr. Surtees to Mr. Jonathan Oldbuck, p. 64.


No literary forgeries were ever much better done than the sham
ballads which Surtees of Mainsforth imposed on Sir Walter Scott.
The poems were spirited and good of their kind; and though we
wonder now that some of them could take in an expert, it is by no
means assured that we are even to-day acquainted with the whole of
Surtees' frauds. Why a man otherwise honourable, kindly,