My own thoughts were sad enough;—yet I felt something soothing in the magnificent scenery with which I was surrounded; and thought, in the enthusiasm of the moment, that had my faith been that of Rome, I could have consented to live and die a lonely hermit in one of the romantic and beautiful islands amongst which our boat glided.
The Bailie had also his speculations, but they were of somewhat a different complexion; as I found when, after about an hour's silence, during which he had been mentally engaged in the calculations necessary, he undertook to prove the possibility of draining the lake, and "giving to plough and harrow many hundred, ay, many a thousand acres, from whilk no man could get earthly gude e'enow, unless it were a gedd,* or a dish of perch now and then."
* A pike.
Amidst a long discussion, which he "crammed into mine ear against the stomach of my sense," I only remember, that it was part of his project to preserve a portion of the lake just deep enough and broad enough for the purposes of water-carriage, so that coal-barges and gabbards should pass as easily between Dumbarton and Glenfalloch as between Glasgow and Greenock.
At length we neared our distant place of landing, adjoining to the ruins of an ancient castle, and just where the lake discharges its superfluous waters into the Leven. There we found Dougal with the horses. The Bailie had formed a plan with respect to "the creature," as well as upon the draining of the lake; and, perhaps in both cases, with more regard to the utility than to the practical possibility of his scheme. "Dougal," he said, "ye are a kindly creature, and hae the sense and feeling o' what is due to your betters—and I'm e'en wae for you, Dougal, for it canna be but that in the life ye lead you suld get a Jeddart cast* ae day suner or later. I trust, considering my services as a magistrate, and my father the deacon's afore me, I hae interest eneugh in the council to gar them wink a wee at a waur faut than yours.
* ["The memory of Dunbar's legal (?) proceedings at Jedburgh is preserved in the proverbial phrase Jeddart Justice, which signifies trial after execution."—Minstrelsy of the Border, Preface, p. lvi.]
Sae I hae been thinking, that if ye will gang back to Glasgow wi' us, being a strong-backit creature, ye might be employed in the warehouse till something better suld cast up."
"Her nainsell muckle obliged till the Bailie's honour," replied Dougal; "but teil be in her shanks fan she gangs on a cause-way'd street, unless she be drawn up the Gallowgate wi' tows, as she was before."
In fact, I afterwards learned that Dougal had originally come to Glasgow as a prisoner, from being concerned in some depredation, but had somehow found such favour in the eyes of the jailor, that, with rather overweening confidence, he had retained him in his service as one of the turnkeys; a task which Dougal had discharged with sufficient fidelity, so far as was known, until overcome by his clannish prejudices on the unexpected appearance of his old leader.
Astonished at receiving so round a refusal to so favourable an offer, the Bailie, turning to me, observed, that the "creature was a natural-born idiot." I testified my own gratitude in a way which Dougal much better relished, by slipping a couple of guineas into his hand. He no sooner felt the touch of the gold, than he sprung twice or thrice from the earth with the agility of a wild buck, flinging out first one heel and then another, in a manner which would have astonished a French dancing-master. He ran to the boatmen to show them the prize, and a small gratuity made them take part in his raptures. He then, to use a favourite expression of the dramatic John Bunyan, "went on his way, and I saw him no more."