Page:Important passages in the life of Mansie Wauch, tailor in Dalkeith.pdf/20

20 with a blanket rowed round him. and my journeyman, Tommy Bodkin,—who being an orphan, I made a kind of parlour boarder of, lie sleeping on a shake-down beyond the kitchen fire—to hold a consultation, and be witness of the transaction.

I got my musket, and Tommy Bodkin armed himself with the goose, a deadly weapon, whoever may get a clour with it, and Benjie took the poker in one hand and the tongs in the other; and out we all marched briskly, to make the Frenchman, that was locked up from the light of day in the coal house surrender. After hearkning at the door for a while, and finding all quiet, he gave a knock to rouse him up, and see if we could bring anything out of him by speering his cross-questions. Tammy and Benjie trembled from top to toe, like aspen leaves, but fient a word could we make common sense of at a'. I wonder wha edicates thae foreign creatures? it was in vain to follow him, for he just gab, gabbled away, like ane o' the stone-masons at the tower of Babel. It first I was completely bamboozled, and amaist dung stupid, though I kent a word of French which I wantit to pit till him, so I cried through, "Canna you speak Frencha, Mounseer?"

He hadna the politeness to stop and mak answer, but just gaed on wi' his string of havers, without either rhyme or reason, which we could mak neither tap, tail, nor main o'.

It was a sair trial to us a', putting us to our wits end, and hoo to come on was past all visible comprehension: when Tammy Bodkin, gieing his elbow a claw said, "Odd maister, I wager something that he's broken loose frae Pennycuick. We have him like a rotten in a fa." On Pennycuick being mentioned we heard the foreign cratur in the coalhouse groaning out, "och" and "ohone," and "parbleu," and "Mysie Rabbie," —that I fancy was his sweetheart at hame, sum bit French queen