Page:Important passages in the life of Mansie Wauch, tailor in Dalkeith.pdf/19

19 to gie a look into the hen-house door, and lock the coal cellar, so that I might pit the bit key intil my breek pouches, I happened to gie a keek in, and lo and behold, the awfu' apparition of a man wi' a yellow jacket, lying sound asleep on a great lump o' parrot-coal in a corner.

In the hurry of my terror and surprise, at seeing a man with a yellow jacket, and a blue foraging-cap in such a situation. I was like to drap the guid twopenny candle, and feint clean away; but coming to mysell in a jiffy, I determined, in case it might be a high-way rubber, to thraw about the key, and, rinning up for the firelock, shoot him through the head instantly, if found necessary. In turning round the key, the lock being in want of a feather o' oil, made a noise, and waukened the poir wretch, who, jumping to the soles of his feet in despair, cried out in a voice that was like to break my heart, though I coudna not mak out ae word of his paraphernaily. It minded me by a' the world, of a wheen cats fuffing and feighting through ither, and whiles something that sounded like "Sugar, sugar, measure the cord," and "dabble dabble." It was waur than the maist outrageous Gaelic ever spoken in the height o' passion by a Hieland shearer.

"Oho!" thinks I, friend, ye cannot be a Christian from your lingo, that's one thing poz; and I would wager tippence your a Frenchy. Who kens keep us all, but ye may be Bonaparte himself in disguise, come over in a flat bottomed boat, to spy the nakedness of the land. So ye may just rest content, and keep your quarters good till the morn's morning."

It was a wonderful business, and enough to happen to a man, in the course of his lifetime, to find Mounseer from Paris in his coal neuk, and have the enemy of his country snug under lock and key; so, while he kept rampaging, fuffing, stamping, and diabbling away, I went in, and brought out Benjie