Page:Traditional Tales of the English and Scottish Peasantry - 1887.djvu/139

Rh list of rewards given by government to men who had laboured for the good of their country, I observed a calculation of the proceeds of illicit distillations; while on the floor lay the skin of a fat wether recently killed, which still bore the mark of a neighbouring farmer, whose consent to this appropriation my companions, in the full relish of liberty, had not thought it necessary to obtain.

"During this examination the eye of John Mackleg dwelt upon all my motions with increasing jealousy and distrust. At length, when my glance settled on the sheepskin, he exclaimed, in a tone reproving and harsh, 'Deil be in ye, Mungo Macubin; will ye let that fiend's baited hook of a gauger sit quietly there, and take an inventory of the only world's goods the oppression of man has left us? Take tent, lad, take tent; ye think him a bird that means nae mischief in his sang; bide ye a bit, ye may find him worse than a water-adder, and as cunning as lang Sandie Frizel the sautman, who praised the tone of your fiddle and your skill in cup-making, and having proven the excellence of our distillation, sent auld Wylie Metestick, the gauger, to look at our cavern of curiosities!' 'I'll tell ye what, John,' said his companion; 'guide your tongue in a less graceless manner, else it may bring your foreteeth and my right-hand knuckles acquainted. Gauger! What puts it into thy gowk's head that the lad's a gauger? Thinkest thou that a single excise man, and ane both soft and slim, would have dropped down into the adder's den? But where's the profit of carousing with such a clod of the valley as thee?' Here the chief manager of this illicit establishment rose, and looked out into the wood; returned to his seat; and thus he resumed his conversation.

But where's the profit of putting trust in such a capon as thee? When the day comes that we have long looked for, you will put your hand to the full tankard rather than to the sharpened steel. And such a desirable day is not far distant, else let man believe no longer in white paper and black print. What says Ringan Alarum, of the Cowgate, in his strong paper called "Liberty's Lighted Match," which auld Davie Dustyhause, the west-country skin-man, gave us when we sold him our cannily-come-by skins of three mug ewes. Does he not say as much as that the sceptre will soon be more harmless than a shepherd's staff; the mitre as little reverenced as grey hairs or a scone-bonnet; a coronet