Soon after the foregoing transaction, a thing happened that, in a manner,
I would fain conceal and suppress from the knowledge of future times,
although it was but a sort of sprose to make the world laugh. Fortunately
for my character, however, it did not fall out exactly in my hands,
although it happened in the course of my provostry. The matter spoken
of, was the affair of a Frenchman who was taken up as a spy; for the
American war was then raging, and the French had taken the part of the
Yankee rebels.
One day, in the month of August it was, I had gone on some private
concernment of my own to Kilmarnock, and Mr Booble, who was then oldest
Bailie, naturally officiated as chief magistrate in my stead.
There have been, as the world knows, a disposition on the part of the
grand monarque of that time, to invade and conquer this country, the
which made it a duty incumbent on all magistrates to keep a vigilant eye
on the in-comings and out-goings of aliens and other suspectable persons.
On the said day, and during my absence, a Frenchman, that could speak no
manner of English, somehow was discovered in the Cross-Key inns. What he
was, or where he came from, nobody at the time could tell, as I was
informed; but there he was, having come into the house at the door, with
a bundle in his hand, and a portmanty on his shoulder, like a traveller
out of some vehicle of conveyance. Mrs Drammer, the landlady, did not
like his looks; for he had toozy black whiskers, was lank and wan, and
moreover deformed beyond human nature, as she said, with a parrot nose,
and had no cravat, but only a bit black riband drawn through two button-
holes, fastening his ill-coloured sark neck, which gave him altogether
something of an unwholesome, outlandish appearance.
Finding he was a foreigner, and understanding that strict injunctions
were laid on the magistrates by the king and government anent the
egressing of such persons, she thought, for the credit of her house, and
the safety of the community at large, that it behoved her to send word to
me, then provost, of this man's visibility among us; but as I was not at
home, Mrs Pawkie, my wife, directed the messenger to Bailie Booble's. The
bailie was, at all times, overly ready to claught at an alarm; and when
he heard the news, he went straight to the council-room, and sending for
the rest of the council, ordered the alien enemy, as he called the
forlorn Frenchman, to be brought before him. By this time, the suspicion
of a spy in the town had spread far and wide; and Mrs Pawkie told me,
that there was a palid consternation in every countenance when the black
and yellow man--for he had not the looks of the honest folks of this
country--was brought up the street between two of the town-officers, to
stand an examine before Bailie Booble.
Neither the bailie, nor those that were then sitting with him, could
speak any French language, and "the alien enemy" was as little master of
our tongue. I have often wondered how the bailie did not jealouse that
he could be no spy, seeing how, in that respect, he wanted the main
faculty. But he was under the enchantment of a panic, partly thinking
also, perhaps, that he was to do a great exploit for the government in my
absence.
However, the man was brought before him, and there was he, and them all,
speaking loud out to one another as if they had been hard of hearing,
when I, on my coming home from Kilmarnock, went to see what was going on
in the council. Considering that the procedure had been in handsome time
before my arrival, I thought it judicious to leave the whole business
with those present, and to sit still as a spectator; and really it was
very comical to observe how the bailie was driven to his wit's-end by the
poor lean and yellow Frenchman, and in what a pucker of passion the
pannel put himself at every new interlocutor, none of which he could
understand. At last, the bailie, getting no satisfaction--how could
he?--he directed the man's portmanty and bundle to be opened; and in the
bottom of the forementioned package, there, to be sure, was found many a
mystical and suspicious paper, which no one could read; among others,
there was a strange map, as it then seemed to all present.
"I' gude faith," cried the bailie, with a keckle of exultation, "here's
proof enough now. This is a plain map o' the Frith o' Clyde, all the way
to the tail of the bank o' Greenock. This muckle place is Arran; that
round ane is the craig of Ailsa; the wee ane between is Plada. Gentlemen,
gentlemen, this is a sore discovery; there will be hanging and quartering
on this." So he ordered the man to be forthwith committed as a king's
prisoner to the tolbooth; and turning to me, said:--"My lord provost, as
ye have not been present throughout the whole of this troublesome affair,
I'll e'en gie an account mysel to the lord advocate of what we have
done." I thought, at the time, there was something fey and overly
forward in this, but I assented; for I know not what it was, that seemed
to me as if there was something neither right nor regular; indeed, to say
the truth, I was no ill pleased that the bailie took on him what he did;
so I allowed him to write himself to the lord advocate; and, as the
sequel showed, it was a blessed prudence on my part that I did so. For
no sooner did his lordship receive the bailie's terrifying letter, than a
special king's messenger was sent to take the spy into Edinburgh Castle;
and nothing could surpass the great importance that Bailie Booble made of
himself, on the occasion, on getting the man into a coach, and two
dragoons to guard him into Glasgow.
But oh! what a dejected man was the miserable Bailie Booble, and what a
laugh rose from shop and chamber, when the tidings came out from
Edinburgh that, "the alien enemy" was but a French cook coming over from
Dublin, with the intent to take up the trade of a confectioner in
Glasgow, and that the map of the Clyde was nothing but a plan for the
outset of a fashionable table--the bailie's island of Arran being the
roast beef, and the craig of Ailsa the plum-pudding, and Plada a butter-
boat. Nobody enjoyed the jocularity of the business more than myself;
but I trembled when I thought of the escape that my honour and character
had with the lord advocate. I trow, Bailie Booble never set himself so
forward from that day to this.