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were forced to dismount and give them their horses and money into the bargain, being somewhat consoled that they had suffered no worse consequences, for Sawney, by this time, was drenched in all manner of villainy, and bloodshed was now accounted a trifle, so little value did he set on the lives of any persons.

Sawney having run a merry course of roguery and villainy in and about Edinburgh for some time, where he made a considerable advantage to himself, so that fortune seemed to have requited him for all the poverty and want he had before endured, determined now to go home to his wife, and spend the remainder of his days agreeably with her, on the acquisitions and plunder he had made on his countrymen. Accordingly he came to Glasgow, where, among a few acquaintances he conversed with, for he did not care to make himself too public, he gave signs of amendment, which at first they could hardly be brought to believe in. One night being in bed with his wife, they had a close discourse together on all their foregoing life, and the good woman expressed an extraordinary emotion of joy at the seeming alteration and change in her husband; she could not imagine what reason to impute it to; for she had been so much terrified from time to time with his barbarities, that she had no room to think his conversion was real; neither, on reflecting on the many robberies and murders he had committed, could she persuade herself that he could so soon abandon his licentious and wicked courses; for she supposed, if his altered conduct was real, it was miraculous, and an original piece of goodness hardly to be met with. The sequel will prove that this woman had juster notions of her husband than the rest of his acquaintance, and those that knew him, and that she built all her fears on a solid and good foundation, as we shall endeavour to shew in its proper place. For all the signs he gave of an altered conduct, and all the plausible hints to rectify his former mistaken steps, were no other than only to amuse the world into a good opinion of him, so that he might make his advantage of it with the greater freedom and impunity. And he was not out in his aim; for it seems, whenever he committed any thing sinister,