Page:Important passages in the life of Mansie Wauch, tailor in Dalkeith.pdf/18

18 was without bounds, having a great notion that I had been killed on the spot. So I reached round my hand, very thankfully, to tak out my pocketnapkin, to gie my brow a wipe, when lo and behold the tail of my Sunday's coat was fairly aff and away, dockit by the haunch buttons.

A PHILISTINE IN THE COAL-HOLE

It was about the mouth of March, in the year of grace anno doimini eighteen hunder, that the haill country trummelled, like a man ill of the interminable fiver, under the consternation of Bonapartie, and all the French vagabonds emigrating ower, and landing in the firth. Keep us a! the folk, dytit bodies, pat less confidence than became them in what our volunteer regiments were able and willing to do; though we had a remnant amang us of the true bluid, that with loud laughter lauched the creatures to scorn, and I, for ane, keepit up my pluck, like a true Hielander. Does ony leeving soul believe that Scotland could be conquered, and the like o' us sold, like Egyptian slaves, into captivity? Fie. fie,—I could spit on siccan haevers. Are we no descended, faither and son frae Robert Bruce and Sir William Wallace, having the bright bluid of freemen in our veins, and the Pentland hills. as weel as our ain dear hames and firesides, to fight for? The fief that wadna gie cut-and-thrust for his country, as lang as he had a breath to draw, or a leg to stand on, should be tied neck and heels, without benefit o' clergy, and thrown ower Leith pier, to swim for his life like a mangy dog!

It was sometime in the blasty month of March, the weather being rawish and rainy, wi' sharp frosty nights, that left all the window-soles whitewashed ower with frost-rind in the mornings, that, as I was going out in the dark, afore lying doun in my bed,