Volume 1 - Electric Scotland

A MAN CLOTHED IN PLAIN APPAREL. 119
taken into the confidence of the rioters. This is a
legend which is not perhaps much more to be relied
on than if it were a legend of the saints. We have
the fact on Lockhart's authority that he and Wilson
sitting up half the night, with Mr Blackwood filling
the part of the admiring audience, and cheering them
on as verse was added to verse—were the real authors.
And this story no doubt is the true one.
It is only fair that the reader should judge for him-
self of this production. He has just heard the story
of Pringle and Cleghorn, and their failure. He will
therefore be as able as any one to comprehend the
amusing version which I quote from an old yellow
proof, with the dust of nearly seventy years upon its
crumpled page. It was not yet revised, and it is
different a little from the final publication. He
will, however, be very well able to decide whether
there was any venom in the tale. It is prefaced by a
grave paragraph, giving the exact place of the manu-
script in " the great Library of Paris." The writer is
set down suddenly " in the midst of a great city that
looketh toward the north and toward the east, and
ruleth over every nation and kindred and tongue that
handle the pen of the writer."
I looked, and behold a man clothed in plain apparel stood in
the door of his house : and I saw his name, and the number of
his name ; and his name was as it had been the colour of ebony,
and his number was as the number of a maiden, when the days
of the years of her virginity have expired.
And I turned my eyes, and behold two beasts came from the
lands of the borders of the South; and when I saw them I
wondered with great admiration.
The one beast was like a lamb, and the other like a bear
and they had wings on their heads : their faces also were like
;