Page:Comical tricks of Lothian Tom (3).pdf/9

 9           supply him no more. He knew his grand- mother had plenty of money, but she would give him none; but the old woman had a good black cow of her own, which Tom went to the fields one evening and catches, and takes her to an old waste house, which stood at a distance from any other, and there he kept her two or three days giving her meat and drink at night when it was dark, and made the old woman believe somebody had stolen the cow for their winter's mart, which was grief enough to the old woman, for the loss of her cow. However she employs Tom to go to a fair that was near by, and buy her another: she gives him three pounds which Tom accepts of very thank- fully, and promises to buy her one as like the other as possibly he could get; then he           takes a piece of chalk, and brays it as            small as meal, and steeps it in a little water and there with rubs over the cow's           face and back, which made her baith brucket and rigget. So Tom in the morning, takes the cow to a public house within a little of the fair, and left her till the fair was over, and then drives her home before him; and as soon as they came home, the cow began to rout as she used to do, which made the old woman to rejoice, thinking it was her own cow