Page:History and comical transactions of Lothian Tom (7).pdf/9

 Comical Tranfactions of Lothian Tom. 9

it, when fhe faw her white face, fighed, & id, ‘ Alas! thou’ll ne’er be like the kindly rute, my Black lady, and yet routs like er as ony ever I did hear But fays Tom o himfelf, his a mercy you know not what he fays, or all would be wrong yet. So in two or three days, the old woman put forth her bra’ rigget cow in the morning with the reft of her neighbour’s cattle, but it came on a fore day of heavy rain, which wafhed away all the white from her face and back; fo the old woman’s Black-lady came home at night, and her rigeed cow went away with the fhower and was never heard of. But Tom’s father, having fome fufpicion, and looking narrowly into the cow’s face, found fome of the chalk not wafhed away, and then he gave poor Tom a hearty beating, and fent him away to feek his fortune w'itb a fkin full of fore bones.

PART. III.

TOM, being now turned to his own fhifts, confiders with himfelf, how to raife a little more money, gets a long ftring as near as he could guefs to be the length of his mother, and into Edinburgh he goes, to a wright who was acquainted with his father and mother: The wright afked him how he did; he anfwered him, very foberly, he had. loft a good dutiful mother laft night, and