"Ah me! I was a casual ejector,[D]
In the brave days of old," I heard one say;
"I knew Elizabeth, the Lord Protector
I spake with yesterday."
To whom in contradiction snarled the other,
"There was no living blood our veins to fill.
Both you and I were nought but shadows, brother,
And we are shadows still."
Room for a lady, room, as at Megiddo
The hosts made way for passage of the king,
For from the darkness crept there forth a widow
In weeds and wedding ring.
"I am the widow, I, whereof the singers
Of Scotland sang, their cruel words so smote
My tender heart, that ofttimes itched my fingers
To take them by the throat.
"He scoffed at me, dour bachelor of Glasgow,[E]
If I existed not for him, the knave,
'Twas all his fault who let some bonnie lass go
Unwedded to her grave."
[B] Aulus Agerius and Numerius Negidius are names continually occurring in the Roman institutional writers as typical names of parties to legal process, corresponding very much to the John Stiles and John Nokes of the older English law-books, and the Amr and Zaid of Mohammedan law. John Stiles was frequently contracted to J. S.
[C] Vi and clam were part of the form of the interdict, which was a mode of procedure by which the prætor settled the right of possession of landed property.
[D] The casual ejector was John Doe, who was, like Richard Roe, an entirely imaginary person, of much importance in the old action of ejectment abolished in 1852.
[E] The allusion is to the "Advocates' Widows Fund," subscribed to by all members of the Scottish bar, married or unmarried. The non-existent widow of the unmarried advocate has been a frequent subject of legal verse. See "The Bachelor's Dream," by John Rankine, (Journal of Jurisprudence, vol. xxii. p. 155), "My Widow," by David Crichton (id. vol. xxiv. p. 51).