Westminster Hall. Minos has now purified his courts in both
cities from all traffic but his own.] Now, don't you read this
to your worthy father, Alan--he loves me well enough, I know, of
a Saturday night; but he thinks me but idle company for any other
day of the week. And here, I suspect, lies your real objection
to taking a ramble with me through the southern counties in this
delicious weather. I know the good gentleman has hard thoughts
of me for being so unsettled as to leave Edinburgh before the
Session rises; perhaps, too, he quarrels a little--I will not say
with my want of ancestry, but with my want of connexions. He
reckons me a lone thing in this world, Alan, and so, in good
truth, I am; and it seems a reason to him why you should not
attach yourself to me, that I can claim no interest in the
general herd.

Do not suppose I forget what I owe him, for permitting me to
shelter for four years under his roof: My obligations to him are
not the less, but the greater, if he never heartily loved me. He
is angry, too, that I will not, or cannot, be a lawyer, and, with
reference to you, considers my disinclination that way as PESSIMI
EXEMPLI, as he might say.

But he need not be afraid that a lad of your steadiness will be
influenced by such a reed shaken by the winds as I am. You will
go on doubting with Dirleton, and resolving those doubts with
Stewart, ['Sir John Nisbett of Dirleton's DOUBTS AND QUESTIONS
UPON THE LAW, ESPECIALLLY OF SCOTLAND;' and 'Sir James Stewart's
DIRLETON'S DOUBTS AND QUESTIONS ON THE LAW OF SCOTLAND RESOLVED
AND ANSWERED,' are works of authority in Scottish jurisprudence.
As is generally the case, the doubts are held more in respect