Page:Folk-lore - A Quarterly Review. Volume 3, 1892.djvu/197

 Rh "What have you to say?" asked his Lordship.

Donald then related the circumstances of the barn, and requested that the young widow's sweetheart be brought into court in the clothes he wore on the night of the murder, and that he (Donald) could give proof that the young man was guilty and the pedlar innocent.

The young man was taken into court, and when he was placed at the bar, Donald asked if there was a tailor in the court-house.

"Yes," says a man, rising opposite him.

"Try," says Donald to the tailor, "if there is a piece cut off from the skirt of his coat."

"Yes," says the tailor.

Thereupon Donald produced from his waistcoat-pocket the piece he had cut off from the man's coat, and giving it to the tailor, asked him if it suited the piece wanting in the coat.

"Yes," says the tailor; "it is the very piece that was cut off from the skirt of the coat."

Donald then related the circumstances of the case a second time. The man and woman were both executed in Aberdeen for this murder, and the pedlar was free.

Donald now set out for Nairn to visit his wife, but, before leaving the town, he bought a pistol, powder, and shot.

"Who knows," says he, "what may happen to me before I reach my journey's end?"

At last the good man arrived at Nairn at night, but well did he find out the house of his loving wife. He opened the door, and upon going in, he at once knew his wife's voice as she and another man were quarrelling. He charged his pistol to shoot the man; but here he remembered his third advice the baker gave him: "Think thrice before you lift your hand to strike any man."

When the man stopped quarrelling, the woman began and said: "You young rascal, I have only yourself, and little pleasure have I ever got from you or your father before you. He left me the night we were married, and it