Page:History of John Cheap, the Chapman (7).pdf/22

22 in your own house; but as you are a poor tailor, and neither man nor boy, I'll do nothing but expose you for what you are. O dear honest chapman, cried his wife, ye mauna do that, and I'se gie you cheese and bread. No, no, you thieves, I'm for nothing but vengeance; no bribes for suehsuch [sic]. So as I was lifting up my pack, there was a pretty blaekblack [sic] cat which I spread my napkin over, took the four corners in my hand, carrying her as a bundle, until I came about the middle of the town, then provoking the slogs to an engagement with me, so that there came upon me four or five collies, then I threw the poor tailor's cat in the midst of them, and a terrible battle ensued for some time, and badrons had certainly died in the field, had I not interposed, and got her off mortally wounded. The people who saw the battle alarmed the tailor, and he sallied out like a great champion, with his elwand in his hand. Go back, said I, you lousie dog, or I'll tell about the needles; at which word he turned about. I went into an alehouse to get some breakfast; there they asked me where I was all night, as it was usual in that eountrycountry [sic] for chapmen to get meat where they lodged. I told where I was, but would take none of their meat, because, said I, they seem to me not to be canny, for this morning they were making ropes of cauld sowens, to crown up their stacks wi'. Gae awa', cried the wife, I canna believe it. If you will not believe it, die in your ignorance for me. The wife sent away her son to see if it was so, but or he came back, I set out, and travelled down the side of a water called Avon; and as I was coming past a mill dam, there was a big elownishclownish [sic] fellow lifting a pitcher of water cut of the dam, so he dipt it