I finished my task and an extra page—­hope to do another before supper.  Accomplished the said diligent purpose.

September 18.—­Rainy and gloomy—­that small sifting rain driving on an eastern gale which intermits not.  Wrote letters to Lord Melville, etc, and agreed to act under the Commission.  Settled to be at Melville Castle, Saturday 24th.  I fear this will interfere consumedly with business.  I corrected proof-sheets, and wrote a good deal, but intend to spend the rest of the day in reading and making notes.  No bricks to be made without straw.

[Jedburgh,] September 19.—­Circuit.  Went to poor Mr. Shortreed’s, and regretted bitterly the distress of the family, though they endeavoured to bear it bravely, and to make my reception as comfortable and even cheerful as possible.  My old friend R.S. gave me a ring found in a grave at the Abbey, to be kept in memory of his son.  I will certainly preserve it with especial care.[342]

Many trifles at circuit, chiefly owing to the cheap whisky, as they were almost all riots.  One case of assault on a deaf and dumb woman.  She was herself the chief evidence; but being totally without education, and having, from her situation, very imperfect notions of a Deity, and a future state, no oath could be administered.  Mr. Kinniburgh, teacher of the deaf and dumb, was sworn interpreter, together with another person, a neighbour, who knew the accidental or conventional signs which the poor thing had invented for herself, as Mr. K. was supposed to understand the more general or natural signs common to people in such a situation.  He went through the task with much address, and it was wonderful to see them make themselves intelligible to each other by mere pantomime.  Still I did [not] consider such evidence as much to be trusted to in a criminal case.  Several previous interviews had been necessary between the interpreter and the witness, and this is very much like getting up a story.  Some of the signs, brief in themselves, of which Mr. K. gave long interpretations, put me in mind of Lord Burleigh in the Critic:  “Did he mean all this by the shake of the head?” “Yes, if he shook his head as I taught him."[343] The man was found not guilty.  Mr. K. told us of a pupil of his whom he restored, as it may be said, to humanity, and who told him that his ideas of another world were that some great person in the skies lighted up the sun in the morning as he saw his mother light her fire, and the stars in the evening as she kindled a lamp.  He said the witness had ideas of truth and falsehood, which was, I believe, true; and that she had an idea of punishment in a future state, which I doubt.  He confessed she could not give any guess at its duration, whether temporary or eternal.  I should like to know if Mr. K. is in that respect much wiser than his pupils.  Dined, of course, with Lord Mackenzie, the Judge.