consternation, on finding it flee half open, may be easier imagined than described; especially, as on the door dunting to again, it being soople in the hinges, they both plainly heard a fistling within. Neither of them ever got such a fleg since they were born; for expecting the Frenchman to bounce out like a roaring lion, they hurried like mad into the house, couping the creels over one another, Tommy spraining his thumb against the back-door, and Benjie's foot going into Tommy's coatpocket, which it carried away with it, like a cloth-sandal. At the noise of this stramash, I took opportunity to come fleeing down the stair, with the gun in my hand; in the first place, to show them I was not frightened to handle fire-arms; and, in the second, making pretence that I thought it was Mounseer with his green foraging-cap making an attempt at housebreaking. Benjie was in a terrible pickle; and, though his nose was blooding with the drive he had come against Tommy's teeth, he took hold of my arm like grim death, crying, "Take tent, faither, take tent; the door is open, and the Penicuiker hiding himself behind it. He'll brain some of us with a lump of coal-and will he!" I jealoused at once that this was nonsense; judging that, by all means of rationality, the creature would be off and away like lightning to the sea-shore, and over to France in some honest man's fishing-boat, down by at Fisherrow; but, to throw stoure in the een of the two callants, I loaded with a wheen draps in their presence; and, warily priming the pan, went forward with the piece at full-cock. Tommy and Benjie came behind me, while, pushing the door wide open with the muzzle, as I held my finger at the tricker, I cried, "Stand or be shot;" when young Cursecowl's big ugly mastiff-dog, with the bare mutton bone in its teeth, bolted through between my legs like a fury, and with such a force as to heel me over on the braid of my back, while I went a dunt on the causey that made the gun go off, and riddled Nanse's best washing-tub in a manner that laid it on the superannuated list as to the matter of holding in water. The goose that was sitting on her eggs, among clean straw, in the inside of it, was also rendered a lameter for life. What became of the French vagrant was never seen or heard tell of from that day to this. Maybe he was catched, and, tied neck and heels, hurried back to Penicuik as fast as he left it; or maybe-as one of the Fisherrow oyster-boats was amissing next morning-he succeeled in giving our brave fleets the slip, and rowing night and day against wind and tide, got home in a safe skin but this is all matter of surmise-nobody kens. On making search in the coal-house at our leisure afterwards, we found a boxful of things with black dots on them, some with one, some with two, and four, and six, and so on, for playing at an outlandish game they call the dominoes. It was the handiwork of the poor French creature, that had no other Christian employment but making these and suchlike, out of sheepshanks and marrow-bones. I never liked gambling all my life, it being contrary to the Ten Commandments; and mind of putting on the back of the fire the old pack of cards, with the Jack of Trumps among them, that the deboshed journeymen tailors, in the shop with me in the Grassmarket, used to play birkie with when the maister's back was turned. This is the first time I have acknowledged the transaction to a living soul; had they found me out at the time, my life would not have been worth a pinch of snuff. But as to the dominoes, considering that the Frenchy must have left them as a token of gratitude, and as the only payment in his power for a bit comfortable supper, it behoved me for so I thought-not to turn the wrong side of my face altogether on his present, as that would be unmannerly towards a poor stranger. Nevertheless, and notwithstanding all these reasons, the dominoes, after every thing that can be said of good anent them, were a black sight, and for months and months produced a scene of riot and idleness after working hours, that went far to render our housie, that was before a picture of decorum and decency, a tabernacle of confusion, and a hell upon earth. Whenever time for stopping work came about, down we regularly all sat, night after night, the wife, Benjie, Tommy Staytape, and myself, playing for a ha'penny the game, and growing as anxious, fierce, and keen about it, as if we had been earning the bread of life. After two or three months' trial, I saw that it would never do, for all subordination was fast coming to an end in our bit house, and, for lack of looking after, a great number of small accounts for clouting elbows, piecing waistcoats, and mending leggins, remained unpaid; a great number of wauf customers crowding about us, by way of giving us their change, but with no intention of ever paying a single fraction. The wife, that used to keep every thing bein and snug, behaving herself like the sober mother of a family, began to funk on being taken through hands, and grew obstrapulous with her tongue. Instead of following my directions-who was his born maister in the cutting and shaping line-Tommy Staytape pretended to set up a judgment of his own, and disfigured some ploughmen's jackets in a manner most hideous to behold; while, to crown all, even Absalom, the very callant Benjie, my only bairn, had the impudence to contradict me more than once, and began to think himself as clever as his father. Save us all! it was a terrible business, but I determined, come what would, to give it the finishing stitch. Every night being worse than another, I did not wait long for an opportunity of letting the whole of them ken my mind, and that, whenever I chose, I could make them wheel to the right about. So it chanced, as we were playing, that I was in prime luck, first rooking the one and syne the other, and I saw them twisting and screwing their mouths about as if they were chewing bitter aloes. Finding that they were on the point of being beaten roop and stoop, they all three rose up from the chairs, crying with one voice, that I was a cheat.—An elder of Maister Wiggie's kirk to be called a cheat! Most awful!!! Flesh and blood could not stand it, more especially when I thought on who had dared to presume to call me such; so, in a whirlwind of fury, I swept up two nievefuls of dominoes off the table, and made them flee into the bleezing fire; where, after fizzing and cracking like a wheen squeebs, the whole tot, except about half-a-dozen which fell into the porritch-pot, which was on boiling at the time, were reduced to a heap of grey aizles. I soon showed them who was the top of the tree, and what they were likely to make of undutiful rebellion. So much for a Mounseer's legacy; being in a kind of doubt whether, according to the Riot Act and the Articles of War, I had a clear conscience in letting him away, I could not expect that any favour granted at his hands was likely to prosper. In fighting, it is well kent to themselves and all the world, that they have no earthly chance with us; so they are reduced to the necessity of doing what they can, by coming to our firesides in sheep's clothing, and throwing ram-pushion among the family broth. They had better take care that they do not get their fingers scadded. Having given the dominoes their due, and washed my hands free of gambling I trust for evermore, I turned myself to a better business, which was the going, leaf by leaf, back through our bit day-book, where I found a tremendous sowd of wee outstanding debts. I daresay, not to tell a lee, there were fifty of them, from a shilling to eighteen pence, and so on; but small and small, reckoned up by simple addition, amount to a round sum; while, to add to the misery of the matter, I found we were entangling ourselves to work to a wheen ugly customers, skemps that had not wherewithal to pay lawful debts, and downright rascals, raggamuffins, and ne'er-do-weels. According to the articles of indenture drawn up between me and Tommy Staytape, by Rory Sneckdrawer the penny-writer, when he was bound a prentice to me for seven years, I had engaged myself to bring him up to be a man of business. Though now a journeyman, I reckoned the obligation still binding; so, tying up two dockets of accounts with a piece of twine, I gave one parcel to Tommy, and the other to Benjie, telling them, by way of encouragement, that I would give them a penny the pound for what silver they could bring me in by hook or crook. After three days' toil and trouble, wherein they mostly wore their shoon off their feet, going first up one close and syne down another, up trap-stairs to garrets and ben long trances that led into dirty holes-what think ye did they collect? Not one bodle-not one coin of copper! This one was out of work; -and that one had his house-rent to pay;-and a third one had an income in his nose ;-and a fourth was bedridden with rheumatics; and a fifth one's mother's auntie's cousin was dead; and a sixth one's good-brother's nevoy was going to be married come Martymas;—and a seventh one was away to the back of beyond to see his granny in the Hielands;-and so on. It was a terrible business, but what wool can ye get by clipping swine? 66 The only rational answers I got were two; one of them, Geggie Trotter, a natural simpleton, told Tommy Staytape, that, for part-payment, he would give me a prime leg of mutton, as he had killed his sow last week."-And what, said I to Benjie, did Jacob Truff the gravedigger tell ye by way of news?" He just bad me tell ye, faither, that hoo could ye expect he cou'd gie ye onything till the times grew better; as he hadna buried a living soul in the kirkyard for mair nor a fortnight." CHAPTER XXVI. BENJIE ON THE CARPET. It's no in titles, nor in rank It's no in wealth, like Lon'on bank, BURNS. It is a most wonderful thing to the eye of a philosopher, to make observation how youth gets up, notwithstanding all the dunts and tumbles of infancy-to say nothing of the spainingbrash and the teeth-cutting; and to behold the visible changes that the course of a few years produces. Keep us all! it seemed but yesterday to me, when Benjie, a wee bit smout of a wean, with long linty locks and docked petticoats, toddled but and ben, with a coral gumstick tied round his waist with a bit knitten; and now, after he had been at Dominie Threshem's for four years, he had learned to read Barrie's Collection almost |