"What can he mean by it, deacon?" rejoined the other. "I see no purpose it can serve, for my part."
"But it does serve a purpose," hiccuped the deacon; "It will prevent me from getting home. It is done through malice against me, for the efforts I am making to get him and his party out of the council."
During the latter part of this discourse, they had walked, or rather staggered, from side to side of the street. Between the pillars that, before the great fires in Edinburgh, formed the base of the high tenement standing there, and St. Giles' Church, being the entrance into the Parliament Square, and between St. Giles' and the Exchange buildings, the full moon threw a stream of light, filling both the openings, and leaving all above and below involved in deep shade. It was the moon's rays thus thrown upon the ground, and reaching up to the second windows of the houses, that formed the wall which the two officials observed.
"Deil tak me," ejaculated the deacon, "but this is a fine trick to play upon the deacon of an incorporation in his own town! Were it not for exposing myself at this untimeous hour, I would raise the town, and pull it down at the head of the people. Faith, Tom, I will do it!" And he was on the point of shouting aloud at the pitch of his voice, when the more prudent treasurer put his hand upon the mouth of the enraged deacon.
"For mercy's sake, be quiet!" said he. "What are you going to be about? Is this a time of night for a member of council to make a riot, and expose himself in the High Street? To-morrow will be time enough to pull it down by force, if you cannot get a vote of the council to authorise it. No doubt it is a round-about way and a sair climb; but just, like a wise and prudent man, as you always are, put up with it for one night, and come along down the Fishmarket Close, up the Cowgate, and climb the West Bow, to the deaconess, who, I have no doubt, is weary waiting on you."
"Faith, Tom, I am in part persuaded you advise well for once," replied the deacon; "so I will act upon it, although I am your deacon, and all advice ought to come from me."
And away they trudged. Both were corpulent men; but the deacon, having been several times in the council, was by much the heavier of the two. Down they went by the Fishmarket Close, and up the Cowgate, the deacon, sulky and silent, meditating all the way vengeance against the provost; but, in ascending the steep and winding Bow, his patience entirely left him; he stopped, more than once, to wipe the perspiration from his brow, recover his breath, and mutter curses on the head of the official. At length, they reached the deacon's home, where his patient spouse waited his arrival. Without uttering a word, he threw himself upon a chair, placing his hat and wig upon a table. It was some minutes before he recovered his breath sufficiently to answer the questions of his anxious wife, or give vent to the anger that was consuming him. At length, to the fifty-times put questions of—
"Deacon, what has vexed you so sorely? what has happened to keep you so late?" he broke forth—
"What vexes me? what has kept me so late? You may, with good reason, inquire that, woman. Our pretty provost is the sole cause. You may be thankful that you have seen my face this night." And he commenced and gave an exaggerated account of the immense wall that the provost had caused to be built, from the Crames to the Royal Exchange, reaching as high as the third story of the houses; and the great length of time he had been detained in examining it, to discover a way to get over or through it—all which the simple deaconess believed, and heartily joined her husband in abusing the provost.
"Had a wall been built across the Castlehill," she said, "when the highlandmen were in the town, and the cannon balls flying down the street, I could have known the use of it; but to build a wall between the Crames and the Royal Exchange, to keep the Lawnmarket and Castlehill people from kirk and market—surely the man's mad!"