and Trotter, writers to the Signet-the agents employed for Hacket. In a dim corner of the court, with a thick veil drawn across her face, sat the criminal's young wife-Euphame Holdfast or Hacket, as she was called in the indictment.

Corbie employed the interval before the judges entered in obtaining opinions on certain questions of legal procedure in which his clients were interested, from the clerk at his side. It was a tempting opportunity, moreover, to air his own erudition, which had been growing somewhat musty of late.

'Noo, you maun understan, Mr. Drumly, that by the sett o' the burgh, the sea-greens belang to the feuars. But the deeficulty arises What's a sea-green? "A variety o' sea-kail," says the Doctor jocosely; but he's a daft body. Indeed, Mr. Drumly, I've heard him declare that the Decretum et Decretalia o' the Canonists are superior in maist respecs to the Corpus Juris Civilis! But the truth is that the study o' deeveenity obscures and stultifies the faculties o' the understandin', whilk on the contrar are recreated, refreshed, and whetted by the law. Noo, the sea and the sea-shore are onquestionably inter regalia-that I wunna dispute-but it disna appear to me, and it certainly to the best o' my judgment has not been sattled by the Coort-at laste by the Hoose o' Lords-that the sea-shore, being inter regalia, extends beyond the ordinary leemits o' the tide. Whereas it is the land covered by the spring tides whereof a seagreen consists, accordin' to oor institutional writers, and mair particularly Lords Stair and Bankton. Says I to the Provost"Dootless, Provost, the value o' the property is sma'"-for you see the Broch is entirely bigget on rocks which rise perpendicular from the deep sea-" but the question o' law being of general importance, a declaratory action at the instance o' the Provost and Bailies o' the burgh against His Majesty's Advocate as representing the Crown-" At this moment a macer entering announced "The Court.' The audience rose.

Why was the dress of a judge of the Supreme Court in the year One cut precisely like an old lady's? Why, indeed, should really eminent lawyers (and there are sometimes eminent lawyers on the bench) be condemned to trot into a court of justice, from which every ludicrous association should be excluded, holding up their petticoats?

Their lordships sat down, and the audience resumed their seats. "It's Pitblethers, Kilreekie, and Fozie,' said Mr. Drumly. 'The Lord hae mercy on Harry Hacket,' Corbie rejoined piously. If it's within the leemits o' possibeelity, Fozie 'll hang him.' Lord Fozie had an evil name among the criminal classes.

The reader who lives on the other side of the Tweed may perhaps fancy that Mr. Drumly was taking malicious liberties with their lordships' titles. But this would be a mistake. The fact was that when a Scotch lawyer of the year One was elevated to the bench he became what John Gibson Lockhart in his epitaph on Patrick Robert

it to the name of his family acres-if he had any. Now the names of most of the estates in the Scotch Lowlands, from whence the judges were then mainly drawn, being by no means euphonious or musical to southern ears, the consequence of this singular custom was that, on mounting the bench, a decorous Wedderburn, or Gordon, or Ogilvy was incontinently translated into a Lord Pitblethers, a Lord Kilreekie, or a Lord Fozie.

The prisoner was then brought up. His sullen and insolent air (partly assumed, no doubt, to conceal intense nervousness) did not create a favourable impression; still he was a well-browned, wellbuilt, presentable fellow, and the young ladies in the gallery (who had been reading The Mysteries of Udolpho') felt, with a thrill of delicious horror, that he was precisely the sort of man that they would not like to meet in a ghostly gallery of a dark night.

6

6

Any objections to the relevancy, Mr. Pittendreich?' asked the Justice-Clerk, when he had arranged his petticoats, and opened the scroll-book in which he took his notes.

Certainly, my Lord.' And then Mr. Pittendreich rose, and, taking up the indictment, tore it (figuratively speaking) to tatters. Thereafter my Lord Advocate in reply proved that no prisoner had ever had the satisfaction of being hanged on a more logical, coherent, and strictly relevant document. I don't mean to go into the legal argument; you will find it reported at length by Mr. Cowpen (afterwards Lord Drumsaddle) in the first volume of his Justiciary Reports. It is enough to say that the main assault was directed against the description of the place where the crime was alleged to have been committed near Mains of Achnagatt, in the parish of Slains, in the county of Aberhaddy;' whereas it was contended, firstly, that Achnagatt was and ought to have been spelt with one 't'; and, secondly, that though situated locally in the parish of Slains and county of Aberhaddy, it was situated legally in the parish of Fordyce and county of Banff. It is unnecessary to attempt to explain the sort of dual existence attributed to Achnagatt-the capacity for being in two places at once, which it seemed to enjoy in common with the Irishman's bird-the general effect produced by the ingenious debate on the minds of the audience being, that no such place did in point of law or of fact exist anywhere. Achnagatt had, in short, become a mere nomen juris before the argument was exhausted. It was exactly one of those nice points which the Court may settle by a toss-up with perfect safety. I had forgotten, to be sure, that a man's life in this case depended upon the solution, but so had the lawyers on either side; for indeed they hanged right and left in the year One, and thought no more of a man's life than of a rat's.

Then my Lords, modestly arranging their petticoats, retired to the robing-room to consider their judgment.

The Lord Justice-Clerk, Pitblethers, was one of Pitt's politicians -a pleasant speaker, a strong partisan, an agreeable and well-in

and Trotter, writers to the Signet-the agents employed for Hacket. In a dim corner of the court, with a thick veil drawn across her face, sat the criminal's young wife-Euphame Holdfast or Hacket, as she was called in the indictment.

Corbie employed the interval before the judges entered in obtaining opinions on certain questions of legal procedure in which his clients were interested, from the clerk at his side. It was a tempting opportunity, moreover, to air his own erudition, which had been growing somewhat musty of late.

'Noo, you maun understan, Mr. Drumly, that by the sett o' the burgh, the sea-greens belang to the feuars. But the deeficulty arises-What's a sea-green? "A variety o' sea-kail," says the Doctor jocosely; but he's a daft body. Indeed, Mr. Drumly, I've heard him declare that the Decretum et Decretalia o' the Canonists are superior in maist respecs to the Corpus Juris Civilis! But the truth is that the study o' deeveenity obscures and stultifies the faculties o' the understandin', whilk on the contrar are recreated, refreshed, and whetted by the law. Noo, the sea and the sea-shore are onquestionably inter regalia-that I wunna dispute but it disna appear to me, and it certainly to the best o' my judgment has not been sattled by the Coort-at laste by the Hoose o' Lords-that the sea-shore, being inter regalia, extends beyond the ordinary leemits o' the tide. Whereas it is the land covered by the spring tides whereof a seagreen consists, accordin' to oor institutional writers, and mair particularly Lords Stair and Bankton. Says I to the Provost"Dootless, Provost, the value o' the property is sma'"-for you see the Broch is entirely bigget on rocks which rise perpendicular from the deep sea-"but the question o' law being of general importance, a declaratory action at the instance o' the Provost and Bailies o' the burgh against His Majesty's Advocate as representing the Crown

At this moment a macer entering announced The Court.'
The audience rose.

Why was the dress of a judge of the Supreme Court in the year One cut precisely like an old lady's? Why, indeed, should really eminent lawyers (and there are sometimes eminent lawyers on the bench) be condemned to trot into a court of justice, from which every ludicrous association should be excluded, holding up their petticoats? Their lordships sat down, and the audience resumed their seats. "It's Pitblethers, Kilreekie, and Fozie,' said Mr. Drumly. 'The Lord hae mercy on Harry Hacket,' Corbie rejoined piously. If it's within the leemits o' possibeelity, Fozie 'll hang him.' Lord Fozie had an evil name among the criminal classes.

The reader who lives on the other side of the Tweed may perhaps fancy that Mr. Drumly was taking malicious liberties with their lordships' titles. But this would be a mistake. The fact was that when a Scotch lawyer of the year One was elevated to the bench he became what John Gibson Lockhart in his epitaph on Patrick Robert

it to the name of his family acres-if he had any. Now the names of most of the estates in the Scotch Lowlands, from whence the judges were then mainly drawn, being by no means euphonious or musical to southern ears, the consequence of this singular custom was that, on mounting the bench, a decorous Wedderburn, or Gordon, or Ogilvy was incontinently translated into a Lord Pitblethers, a Lord Kilreekie, or a Lord Fozie.

The prisoner was then brought up. His sullen and insolent air (partly assumed, no doubt, to conceal intense nervousness) did not create a favourable impression; still he was a well-browned, wellbuilt, presentable fellow, and the young ladies in the gallery (who had been reading The Mysteries of Udolpho') felt, with a thrill of delicious horror, that he was precisely the sort of man that they would not like to meet in a ghostly gallery of a dark night.

6

'Any objections to the relevancy, Mr. Pittendreich?' asked the Justice-Clerk, when he had arranged his petticoats, and opened the scroll-book in which he took his notes.

'Certainly, my Lord.' And then Mr. Pittendreich rose, and, taking up the indictment, tore it (figuratively speaking) to tatters. Thereafter my Lord Advocate in reply proved that no prisoner had ever had the satisfaction of being hanged on a more logical, coherent, and strictly relevant document. I don't mean to go into the legal argument; you will find it reported at length by Mr. Cowpen (afterwards Lord Drumsaddle) in the first volume of his Justiciary Reports. It is enough to say that the main assault was directed against the description of the place where the crime was alleged to have been committed near Mains of Achnagatt, in the parish of Slains, in the county of Aberhaddy;' whereas it was contended, firstly, that Achnagatt was and ought to have been spelt with one 't'; and, secondly, that though situated locally in the parish of Slains and county of Aberhaddy, it was situated legally in the parish of Fordyce and county of Banff. It is unnecessary to attempt to explain the sort of dual existence attributed to Achnagatt-the capacity for being in two places at once, which it seemed to enjoy in common with the Irishman's bird-the general effect produced by the ingenious debate on the minds of the audience being, that no such place did in point of law or of fact exist anywhere. Achnagatt had, in short, become a mere nomen juris before the argument was exhausted. It was exactly one of those nice points which the Court may settle by a toss-up with perfect safety. I had forgotten, to be sure, that a man's life in this case depended upon the solution, but so had the lawyers on either side; for indeed they hanged right and left in the year One, and thought no more of a man's life than of a rat's.

Then my Lords, modestly arranging their petticoats, retired to the robing-room to consider their judgment.

The Lord Justice-Clerk, Pitblethers, was one of Pitt's politicians -a pleasant speaker, a strong partisan, an agreeable and well-in

"Well, Kilreekie, what do you say?' asked the Justice-Clerk.

Faith, Pitblethers, ye may mak' a kirk and a mill o't. There is gude reason and nae reason on baith sides o' the bar. I'm rather for lettin' the youngster aff: if we pit him to the jury they're like to hang him. And did you notice the lass in the black veil under the gallery?-that's Mistress Euphame Holdfast or Hacket, I'll be bound -and an uncommon handsome lass she is. We'll susteen the objections, Pitblethers, if you please,' said Kilreekie, who was a judicious admirer of the fair sex, though a cynical critic of his own.

'Well, my Lords,' said the Justice-Clerk, I recollect his father, old Hacket, on the Inverness circuit after Culloden, and he married a very nice girl-Jane Kilgour of Logie-by the way, a sort of cousin of my own. What say you, Fozie? My impression is that the major won't hold water. And as you say, Kilreekie, the jury are safe to hang him.'

And it wudna be the first o' the clan, Pitblethers, that has undergone a process o' suspension, if the auld Border thieves havena been misca'ed.' The Justice-Clerk, who belonged to an old Border family, rather prided himself on his descent.

I presume you agree, Fozie,' the Justice-Clerk continued, disregarding the interruption, 'that we can't sustain the relevancy? The definition of the locus delict is quite too defective.'

'We'll ca' it the locus pœnitentiæ, if you like, Fozie?' Lord Kilreekie interposed again.

Fozie shut his eyes, wagged his head, and addressed a few inaudible observations to his cravat. I'm for hangin' were the only articulate words.

Lord Fozie, however, was in the minority; and it was agreed that the Justice-Clerk should deliver the unanimous judgment of the

court.

There was an eager intensity of interest in the prisoner's gaze when the judges returned. Hacket had divined truly enough that his fate depended on the decision of the preliminary pleas.

Lord Pitblethers made his points neatly, and sustained the interest to the end.

6

'As it appears,' he said, that the spelling has varied according to the tastes of the successive tenants, I agree with your Lordships that the objection to the double "t" in Achnagatt must be repelled. The archæological argument which we have heard from the bar has shown meritorious research; but it has not sufficed to alter the opinion of the court. Nor do we consider that the words "in the parish of Slains," can be held to vitiate the indictment. Neither my brethren nor myself see our way to hold that the parish of Fordyce, situated as we know in the county of Banff, can also be situated in the county of Aberhaddy. On the contrary, if Achnagatt is in any parish in Scotland (and on that point, which has not been argued, we reserve our opinion), Slains appears primâ facie to be the parish;