What other business is there before us ?" And they proceeded to minute investigations concerning the affair of Porteous's death, and other affairs through which this history has no occasion to trace them.
In the course of their business they were interrupted by an old woman of the lower rank, extremely haggard in look, and wretched in her appearance, who thrust herself into the council room.
"What do you want, gudewife ?--Who are you ?" said Bailie Middleburgh.
"What do I want!" replied she, in a sulky tone--"I want my bairn, or I want naething frae nane o' ye, for as grand's ye are." And she went on muttering to herself with the wayward spitefulness of age--"They maun hae lordships and honours, nae doubt--set them up, the gutter-bloods! and deil a gentleman amang them."-- Then again addressing the sitting magistrate, "Will _your honour_ gie me back my puir crazy bairn ?--_His_ honour!--I hae kend the day when less wad ser'd him, the oe of a Campvere skipper." "Good woman," said the magistrate to this shrewish supplicant--"tell us what it is you want, and do not interrupt the court." "That's as muckle as till say, Bark, Bawtie, and be dune wi't!--I tell ye," raising her termagant voice, "I want my bairn! is na that braid Scots ?" "Who _are_ you ?--who is your bairn ?" demanded the magistrate.
"Wha am I ?--wha suld I be, but Meg Murdockson, and wha suld my bairn be but Magdalen Murdockson ?--Your guard soldiers, and your constables, and your officers, ken us weel eneugh when they rive the bits o' duds aff our backs, and take what penny o' siller we hae, and harle us to the Correctionhouse in Leith Wynd, and pettle us up wi' bread and water and siclike sunkets." "Who is she ?" said the magistrate, looking round to some of his people.
"Other than a gude ane, sir," said one of the city officers, shrugging his shoulders and smiling.
"Will ye say sae ?" said the termagant, her eye gleaming with impotent fury; "an I had ye amang the Figgat-Whins,* wadna I set my ten talents in your wuzzent face for that very word ?" and she suited the word to the action, by spreading out a set of claws resembling those of St.George's dragon on a country sign-post.
* [This was a name given to a tract of sand hillocks extending along the sea-shore from Leith to Portobello, and which at this time were covered with _whin_-bushes or furze.] "What does she want here ?" said the impatient magistrate--"Can she not tell her business, or go away ?" "It's my bairn!--it's Magdalen Murdockson I'm wantin'," answered the beldam, screaming at the highest pitch of her cracked and mistuned voice--"havena I been telling ye sae this half-hour?
And if ye are deaf, what needs ye sit cockit up there, and keep folk scraughin' t'ye this gate ?" "She wants her daughter, sir," said the same officer whose interference had given the hag such offence before--"her daughter, who was taken up last night--Madge Wildfire, as they ca' her." "Madge Hellfire, as they ca' her!" echoed the beldam "and what business has a blackguard like you to ca' an honest woman's bairn out o' her ain name ?" "An _honest_ woman's bairn, Maggie ?" answered the peace-officer, smiling and shaking his head with an ironical emphasis on the adjective, and a calmness calculated to provoke to madness the furious old shrew.
"If I am no honest now, I was honest ance," she replied; "and that's mair than ye can say, ye born and bred thief, that never kend ither folks' gear frae your ain since the day ye was cleckit.

Honest, say ye ?--ye pykit your mother's pouch o' twalpennies Scots when ye were five years auld, just as she was taking leave o' your father at the fit o' the gallows." "She has you there, George," said the assistants, and there was a general laugh; for the wit was fitted for the meridian of the place where it was uttered.

This general applause somewhat gratified the passions of the old hag; the "grim feature" smiled and even laughed--but it was a laugh of bitter scorn.

She condescended, however, as if appeased by the success of her sally, to explain her business more distinctly, when the magistrate, commanding silence, again desired her either to speak out her errand, or to leave the place.
"Her bairn," she said, "_was_ her bairn, and she came to fetch her out of ill haft and waur guiding.

If she wasna sae wise as ither folk, few ither folk had suffered as muckle as she had done; forby that she could fend the waur for hersell within the four wa's of a jail.