"
* Pass.
** Seal.
*** Justice of Peace.
It was indeed totally unintelligible to Jeanie Deans, who was only
impatient to escape from him. He hastily scrawled a line or two on a
dirty piece of paper, and said to her, as she drew back when he offered
it, "Hey!--what the deil--it wunna bite you, my lass--if it does nae
gude, it can do nae ill. But I wish you to show it, if you have ony
fasherie wi' ony o' St. Nicholas's clerks."
"Alas!" said she, "I do not understand what you mean."
"I mean, if ye fall among thieves, my precious,--that is a Scripture
phrase, if ye will hae ane--the bauldest of them will ken a scart o' my
guse feather. And now awa wi' ye--and stick to Argyle; if onybody can do
the job, it maun be him."
After casting an anxious look at the grated windows and blackened walls
of the old Tolbooth, and another scarce less anxious at the hospitable
lodging of Mrs. Saddletree, Jeanie turned her back on that quarter, and
soon after on the city itself. She reached St. Leonard's Crags without
meeting any one whom she knew, which, in the state of her mind, she
considered as a great blessing. "I must do naething," she thought, as she
went along, "that can soften or weaken my heart--it's ower weak already
for what I hae to do.
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