Page:History of John Cheap the comical chapman.pdf/10

 mistress ; but as we were going to bed, in comes three Highland drovers, on their way home from England; the landlord told them that the beds were all taken up, and that two chapmen were to lye in one of them; they swore their broad sword should fail them if a shapman be there that might. They took our bed, and made us sit by the fire all night, we put on a good many peats, and when the drovers were fast asleep, I put on a big brass pan full of water, and boils their brogs therein for the space of half an hour, then lays them as they were, every pair by themselves, so when they arose, every one began to chide one another, saying, hute, hute, ye curs’d sheen a progs, for not one pair of them would serve a child of ten years old, being so boiled in; the landlord persuaded them that their feet were swelled with their hard travelling, and being so wet last night their shoon had dried in, but if they had travelled a mile or two they would go on well. Now the Highlandmen laughed at me the night before, when they lay down in the bed I was to have, but I laughed as heartily to see them trot away in the morning with their boiled brogs in their hands.

WE again came to a place near Soutra hill, where the ale was good and civil usage; our drought being very great, and the more we drank the better we lov’d it; and here we fell in with a Quack Doctor, who bragged us with bottle aboot for two days and two nights; only, when one fell drunk, we pulled and pricked him up with a pin, to keep him frae sleeping ; he bought of our hair, and we of his pills and drugs, he having less knowledge of the one than we had of the other, only we were sure we had as much as set a whole parish to the midden