Page:Traditional Tales of the English and Scottish Peasantry - 1887.djvu/79

Rh the box, and recommenced my march, amid busy calculation of the probable proceeds of my industry.

A little before noon, on a sweet morning of summer, I had seated myself on the summit of a little green fairy hill which overlooks the ancient Abbey of Bleeding Heart; and spreading out before me all the articles I had to offer for sale, I indulged, unconsciously, in the following audible speculation: "A pleasant story and a merry look will do much among the young; and a sedate face and a grave tale will win me a lodging from the staid and devout. For the bonnie lass and the merry lad have I not the choicest ballads and songs? For the wise and the grave do I lack works of solemn import, from the 'Prophecies of Peden,' and the 'Crumb of Comfort,' up to 'Salvation's Vantage-Ground,' or a 'Louping-on-Stone for Heavy Believers'? Then, for those who are neither lax on the one hand nor devout on the other, but stand as a stone in the wall, neither in the kirk nor out of it, have I not books of as motley a nature as they? And look at these golden laces, these silken snoods, and these ivory bosom-busks, though I will not deny that a well-faured lass has a chance to wheedle me out of a lace or a ribbon with no other money than a current kiss, and reduce my profit, yet I must even lay it the heavier on new-married wives, rosy young widows, and lasses with fee and bounty in their laps. It would be a sad thing if love for a sonsie lass should make me a loser."

An old dame in a grey linsey-woolsey gown, a black silk riding-hood pinned beneath her chin, with a large calf skin-covered Bible under her arm, had approached me unseen. She fell upon me like a whirlwind: "Oh! thou beardless trickster, thou seventeen-year-old scant-o'-grace, wilt thou sit planning among God's daylight how to overreach thy neighbour? My sooth, lad, but thou art a gleg one. I question if William Mackfen himself, who has cheated my goodman and me these twenty-seven summers, is half such a wily loon as thyself. A night's lodging ye need never ask at Airnaumrie. And yet it would be a sore matter to my conscience to turn out a face so young and so well-faured to the bensel of the midnight blast." And away the old lady walked, and left me to arrange the treasures of my pack at my leisure.

Her words were still ringing in my ears when an old man, dressed in the antique Scottish fashion—a grey plaid