Page:History of John Cheap the comical chapman.pdf/15

 yes, said I, when I see any thing daft like, I can laugh and look at it as well sleeping as walking. A guid preserve us! ye’re an unco body; but ye need na wait on your pottage, I’ll gi’e you cheese and bread in your pouch, which I willingly accepted and came away.

Then I kept my course well by the foot of Pentland hills, where I got great plenty of hair good and cheap, besides a great quantity of old brass, which was an excellent article to make my little pack seem big and weighty. Then I came into a little country village, and going by the side of a house, there was a big cat sitting in a weaver’s window basking herself in the sun, and washing herself with her feet: I takes her a civil chap on the nose, which made her run in through the window, and the weaver having a bowl full of pottage in the inside of the window to cool, poor run through the middle of them, burnt her feet, and threw them all on the ground, ran through the house crying fire and murder in her own tongue, which caused the weary wicked webster to come running out, when he attacked me in a furious rage, and I, to avoid the first shock, fled to the top of a midden, where, endeavouring to give me a kick, I caught him by the foot, and tumbled him back over into the midden dab, where both his head and shoulders went under dirt and water; but before I could recover my, or arms, the wicked wife and her two sons were upon me in all quarters, the wife hung in my hair, while the two sons boxed me before, and being thus overpowered by numbers, I was fairly beat, the webster's troops being too numerous.

The same day, as I was going up to a country house, I met a poor beggar wife, and a boy, who were both bitten in different parts by a big mastiff dog; they persuaded me to turn back, but I said I should see him first: so went to the side of a hedge,