Page:History of John Cheap the chapman (2).pdf/7

 be a fearful like face indeed, it wou'd fright any living creature out o' their senses.

I hearing the fear they were in, cried to them not to be frighted, for I was not the deil, but a poor chapman who could not get quarters last night; a foul fa' thy carcase Sir, for our Jock is thro' the midden-dub, dirt and a' the gither. He who went last came again; but the other ran into the house and told what he had seen The goodman and his wife came runing, he with a grape in his hand, and her with the Bible, the one crying Sandy, Sandy, is's true that the deil was in the barn. Na, na, said he, it's but a chapman, but poor Jock has gotten a fright wi' him. They laughed heartily at the sport, took me into breakfast, and by this time poor Johnny was gone to bed very sick.

After this I travelled up by the water of Clyde, near the foot of Tintock-hill, where I met with a sweet companion, who was an older traveller than I, and he gave me more information how to blow the goodwife, and sleek the goodman. With him I kept company for two months; and as we travelled down Tweed towards the border, we being both hungry, and could get nothing to buy for the belly, we came unto a wife who had been kirning, but she would give us nothing, nor sell so much as one halfpenny's worth of her sour-milk. Na, na, said she, I'll neither sell butter, bread, nor milk, 'tis a' little enough to sair my ain family: ye that's chapmen may drink water, ye dinna work sair. Ay, but good wife, said I, I hae been at Temple bar, where I was sworn ne'er to drink water, if I could get better. What do ye say, says she, about Temple-bar? a town just about twa three miles and a bittock frae this; a thief ane was to swear ye there, an it wasna auld Willie Miller the cobler, the ill thief a neither minister nor magistrate ever was in it a'.