the hour of two
If Providence had given a touch of imagination to the Bailie , and his head had not been swollen by a position approaching that of the angels , he would have come to terms at once with the boys , in which case bygones would have been bygones , and he would have been spared much humiliation . Unfortunately the Bailie allowed his temper to get the better of him , raging furiously in public places , and breathing forth threatenings about what he would do to the plotter , till all Muirtown , which otherwise might have pitied him , held its sides . He kept our single detective at work for a fortnight , who finally extracted from London John that the `` boardies '' containing the shameful advertisement had been given him by a man uncommonly like the detective himself and that the said `` boardies '' were not to be compared with those he used to carry in London . The detective also learned , on a somewhat risky visit to Mr. McGuffie 's stables , that the Speug had spent the whole day of that historical Saturday till the hour of two -- when he called for peppermints at the Bailie 's shop -- in cleaning out his rabbit-hutch and other domestic duties -- this on the testimony of three of Mr. McGuffie 's grooms , each of whom was willing to swear the same anywhere , or fight the detective , with gloves or without gloves , in the stable-yard or any other place which might be agreed upon . The Bailie also , going from bad to worse , offered a reward of £ 5 for any information which would lead to the conviction of the offender , and received thirty letters -- so many anonymous , attacking his character , public and private , and so many signed , from various cranks in Muirtown , in which the crime was assigned to Irish Roman Catholics , to the Publicans , to the Morisonians , and to a tribe of gypsies camped outside the city . They were all annoying , but there were two which cut the Bailie to the quick . One was written from the security of Glasgow , in which the writer promised , on receipt of the reward , to send a full account of the conspiracy , and , having got the money , replied briefly that he left the matter to the Bailie 's own conscience ; and the second , which asked for no reward except the writer 's sense of having done his duty , and which hinted that if the Bailie put the question straight to his senior assistant , he might find he had been nourishing a viper in his bosom , and that a young man with such a smug appearance could be little else than a rascal .