Page:Comical tricks of Lothian Tom (1).pdf/16



16

bed, it has not been made these two weeks, and now it is about the time the maid makes all the rest, so I'll go, and make mine too. No, no says his master so to your plow, and I'll cause it to be made every night. Then, says Tom, I'll plow two or three furrows more, in the time, so Town gained his end.

One day a butcher came and bought a fine fat calf from Tom's master: and Tom laid it on the horse's neck, before the Butcher; When he was gone; Now, says Tom, what will you hold master, but I'll steal the calf from the butcher before he goes two miles off? Say's his master I'll hold a guinea you don't. Done, says Tom, Into the house he goes, & takes a good shoe of his master's and runs another way across a field, till he got before the Butcher, near the corner of a hedge, where there was an open and turning of the way; here Tom darns himself behind the hedge, and throws the shoe into the middle of the highway; so, when the Butcher came up riding, with his calf before him, Hey, said he to himself there's a good shoe! if I knew how to get on my calf again, I would light for it but what signifies one shoe without its neighbour? So on he rides and lets it ly.