Page:Martha Spreull by Zachary Fleming.pdf/85

Rh Next momin' I gaed to the coort wi' Maister Fleming the writer. It wis a sad, sad sicht to see sae mony braw, weel-put-on, bright-faced laddies ranged in front o' the bar o' justice. The judge had a warm side to the prisoners, for he gied a sair hecklin' to some o' the witnesses; but when I heard three constables, a licht porter, and a nicht watchman, giein' their sworn testimony that the prisoner, William Warstle, had been seen to fling a rape ower the haberdasher's sign—the gilt lamb —and that he and anither, wha stood near him in the dock,



had pu'd the different ends o' the rape till the thing cam' doon on the pavement wi' a clash, I couldna but feel that the sentence—twa guineas or fourteen days—wis, on the whole, reasonable and just.

Weel, weel, thinks I, as I paid doon the siller, this beats a' the student laddies ever I fed. This bursary business is gaun to cost me a bonny penny or a's dune. It gied me something to think aboot, and for the young and rising generation