Page:Folk-lore - A Quarterly Review. Volume 3, 1892.djvu/196

 188 Donald saw the farmer's wife, a young and charming woman. An old, grey, blear-eyed, unkempt man came in after her. But when he had come in, Donald says to the pedlar, "I will not stay here any longer. Dear have I paid for the advice."

"Surely you are not going to take the road at this time of night," says the pedlar; "and if you won't stay in the house, you can sleep in the barn."

Donald agreed to this proposal, and he went to sleep in the barn with his clothes on. He had a wisp of straw for a pillow, a wisp of straw for a bolster, a wisp of straw on both sides of him, and a wisp above him. He was so buried in straw that he had barely room to breathe.

He had scarcely slept, when two persons came in, and sat on the straw right on the top of him. Uncomfortable as he was, he dared not complain or open his mouth, but with a scissors he had in his pocket he cut off a small piece of the coat of the man that was sitting near his head, which was going into his mouth and eyes, and he put the piece he had cut off into his waistcoat-pocket. The man and woman, for such they happened to be, now began courting at the hardest. At last the woman said, "What a pity that old and nasty bodach (carl) wasn't dead. If you would place the razor on his neck, I would send it through his throat myself."

This was what happened. When Donald came out of the barn in the morning, the poor pedlar was in the hands of the officers of the law. He was handcuffed, and was being taken away to Aberdeen on the charge of having murdered the farmer. In the morning the farmer was found dead with his throat cut.

Donald followed them to Aberdeen; the pedlar was taken before the Lords; he was condemned, and the judge put on the black cap to pronounce the sentence of death. At this moment Donald gets up in court, and says: "My Lord, if you please, can a man that has not been summoned to court as a witness speak?"