Many a time have I thought of the business alluded to, which happened to take place in our fore-shop one bonny summer afternoon, when I was selling a coallier wife, from the Marquis of Lothian’s upper hill, a yard of serge at our counter-side. At the time she came in, although busied in reading an account of one of Buonaparte’s battles in the Courant newspaper, I observed at her foot a bonny wee doggie, with a bushy black tail, of the dancing breed—that could sit on its hind-legs like a squirrel, cast biscuit from its nose, and play a thousand other most diverting tricks. Well, as I was saying, I saw the woman had a pride in the bit creature—it was just a curiosity like—and had belonged to a neighbour’s son that volunteered out of the Berwickshire militia, (the Birses, as they were called,) into a regiment that was draughted away into Egypt, Malta, or the East Indies, I believe—so, it seems, the lad’s father and mother thought much more about it, for the sake of him that was off and away—being to their fond eyes a remembrancer, and to their parental hearts a sort of living keepsake.
After bargaining about the serge—and taking two or three other things, such as a leather-cap edged with rabbit-fur for her little nevoy—a dozen of plated buttons for her goodman’s
new waistcoat, which was making up at Bonnyrig by Nicky Sharpshears, my old apprentice—and a spotted silk napkin for her own Sunday neck wear—I tied up the soft articles with grey paper and skinie, and was handing over the odd bawbees of change, when, just as she was lifting the leather-cap from the counter, she said with a terrible face, looking down to the ground as if she was short-sighted—“Pity me! what’s that?”
I could not imagine, gleg as I generally am, what had happened; so came round about the far end of the counter, with my spectacles on, to see what it was, when, lo and behold! I perceived a dribbling of blood all along the clean sanded floor, up and down, as if somebody had been walking about with a cut finger; but, after looking around us for a little, we soon found out the thief—and that we did.
The bit doggie was sitting cowering and shivering, and pressing its back against the counter, giving every now and then a mournful whine, so we plainly saw that every thing was not right. On the which, the wife, slipping a little back, snapped her finger and thumb before its nose, and cried out—“Hiskie, poor fellow!” but no—it would not do. She then tried it by its own name, and bade it rise, saying, “Puggie, Puggie!” when—would ever mortal man of woman born believe it?—its bit black, bushy, curly tail, was off by the rump—docked and away, as if it had been for a wager.
“Eh, megstie!” cried the woman, laying down the leather-cap and the tied-up parcel, and holding out both her hands in astonishment. “Eh, my goodness, what’s come o’ the brute’s tail? Lovy ding! just see, it’s clean gane! Losh keep me! that’s awfu’! Div ye keep rotten-fa’s about your premises, Maister Wauch? See, a bonny business as ever happened in the days of ane’s lifetime!”
As a furnishing tailor, as a Christian, and as an inhabitant of Dalkeith, my corruption was raised—was up like a flash of lightning, or a cat’s back. Such doings in an enlightened age and a civilized country!—in a town where we have three kirks, a grammar school, a subscription library, a ladies’ benevolent society, a mechanics’ institution, and a debating club! My heart burned within me like dry tow; and I could mostly have
jumped up to the ceiling with vexation and anger—seeing as plain as a pikestaff, though the simple woman did not, that it was the handiwork of none other than our neighbour Reuben Cursecowl, the butcher. Dog on it, it was too bad—it was a rascally transaction; so, come of it what would, I could not find it in my heart to screen him. “I’ll wager, however,” said I, in a kind of off-hand way, not wishing exactly, ye observe, to be seen in the business, “that it will have been running away with beef-steaks, mutton-chops, sheep feet, or something else out of the booth; and some of his prentice laddies may have come across its hind-quarters accidentally with the cleaver.”
“Mistake here, or mistake there,” said the woman, her face growing as red as the sleeve of a soldier’s jacket, and her two eyes burning like live coals—“’Od the butcher, but I’ll butcher him, the nasty, ugly, ill-faured vagabond; the thief-like, cruel, malicious, ill-hearted, down-looking blackguard! He would go for to offer for to presume for to dare to lay hands on an honest man’s son’s doug! It sets him weel, the bloodthirsty Gehazi, the halinshaker ne’er-do-weel! I’ll gie him sic a redding up as he never had since the day his mother boor him!” Then looting down to the poor bit beast, that was bleeding like a sheep—“Ay, Puggie, man,” she said in a doleful voice, “they’ve made ye an unco fright; but I’ll gie them up their fit for’t; I’ll show them, in a couple of hurries, that they have catched a Tartar!”—and with that out went the woman, paper parcel, leather-cap and all, randying like a tinkler from Yetholm; the wee wretchie cowering behind her, with the mouse-wabs sticking on the place I had put them to stop the bleeding; and looking, by all the world, like a sight I once saw, when I was a boy, on a visit to my father’s half-cousin, Aunt Heatherwig, on the Castle-hill of Edinburgh—to wit, a thief going down Leith Walk, on his road to be shipped for transportation to Botany Bay, after having been pelted for a couple of hours with rotten eggs in the pillory.
Knowing the nature of the parties concerned, and that intimately on both sides, I jealoused directly that there would be a stramash; so not liking, for sundry reasons, to have my neb seen in the business, I shut to the door, and drew the long bolt; while