I owed this turn of study, in part, to the conversation of my
kind man of business, Mr. Fairscribe, whom I mentioned as having
seconded the efforts of my invaluable friend in bringing the
cause on which my liberty and the remnant of my property depended
to a favourable decision. He had given me a most kind reception
on my return. He was too much engaged in his profession for me
to intrude on him often, and perhaps his mind was too much
trammelled with its details to permit his being willingly
withdrawn from them. In short, he was not a person of my poor
friend Sommerville's expanded spirit, and rather a lawyer of the
ordinary class of formalists; but a most able and excellent man.
When my estate was sold! he retained some of the older title-
deeds, arguing, from his own feelings, that they would be of more
consequence to the heir of the old family than to the new
purchaser. And when I returned to Edinburgh, and found him still
in the exercise of the profession to which he was an honour, he
sent to my lodgings the old family Bible, which lay always on my
father's table, two or three other mouldy volumes, and a couple
of sheepskin bags full of parchments and papers, whose appearance
was by no means inviting.
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