I hastened ben to the room, and, softly pulling up a jink of the window, clapped the side of my head to it; that, unobserved, I might have an opportunity of overhearing the conversation between Reuben Cursecowl and the coallier wife; which, weel-a-wat, was likely to become public property.
“Hollo! you man, do ye ken onything about that?” cried the randy woman;—but wait a moment, till I give a skiff of description of our neighbour Reuben.
By this time—it was ten years after James Batter’s tragedy—Mr Cursecowl was an oldish man—he is gathered to his fathers now—and was considerably past his best, as his wife, douce, honest woman, used to observe. His dress was a little in the Pagan style, and rendered him kenspeckle to the eye of observation. Instead of a hat, he generally wore a long red Kilmarnock nightcap, with a cherry on the top of it, through foul weather and fair; and having a kind of trot in his walk, from a bink forward in his knees, it dang-dangled behind him, like the cap of Mr Merryman with the painted face, the show-folks’ fool. On the afternoon alluded to, he was in full killing-dress, having on an auld blue short coatie, once long, but now docked in the tails, so that the pocket-flaps and the hainch-buttons were not above three inches from the place where his wife had snibbed it across by; and, from long use in his bloodthirsty occupation, his sleeves flashed in the daylight as if they had been double japanned. Tied round his beer-barrel-like waist was a stripped apron, blue and white; and at his left side hung a bloody gaping leather pouch, as if he had been an Israelite returned from the slaughter of the Philistines, filled with steels and knives, straight and crooked, that had done ample execution in their day, I’ll warrant them. Up his thighs were rolled his coarse rig-and-fur stockings, as if it were to gird him for the battle, and his feet were slipped into a pair of bauchles—that is, the under part of old boots cut from the legs. As to his face, lo and behold! the moon shining in the Nor-west—yea, the sun blazing in all his glory—had not a more crimson aspect than Reuben. Like the pig-eyed Chinese folk on tea-cups, his peepers were diminutive and twinkling; but his nose made up for them—and that it did—being portly in all its dimensions
broad and long, and as to colour, liker a radish than any other production in nature. In short, he was as bonny a figure as ever man of woman born clapped eye on; and was cleaving away, most devoutly, at a side of black-faced mutton, when the woman, as I said before, cried out, “Hollo! you man, do ye ken onything about that?” pointing to the dumb animal that crawled and crouched behind her.
“Aweel, what o’t?” cried Cursecowl, still hacking and cleaving away at the meat.
“What o’t? i’ faith, billy, that’s a gude ane,” answered the wife. “But ye’ll no get aff that way; catch me, my man. My name’s no Jenny Mathieson an I haena ye afore your betters. I’ll learn ye what soommenses are.”
Looking at her with a look of lightning for a couple of seconds—“Aff wi’ ye, gin you’re wise,” quo’ Cursecowl, still cleaving away—“or I’ll maybe bring ye in for the sheep’s-head it was trying to make off with in its teeth. Do ye understand that?” And he gave a girn, that stretched his mouth from ear to ear.
This was too much for the subterranean daughter of Eve; it was like putting a red-hot poker among the coals of her own pit. “Oh, ye incarnate cannibal!” she bawled out, doubling her nieve, and shaking it in Reuben’s face; “If ye have a conscience at a’, think black-burning shame o’ yoursell! Just look, ye bluidy salvage; just take a look there, my bonny man, o’ your handiwark now. Isn’t that very pretty?”—“Aff wi’ ye,” continued Cursecowl, still cleaving away with the chopping-axe, and muttering a volley of curses through the knife, which he held between his teeth—“Aff wi’ ye; and keep a calm sough.”
“The dog’s no mine, or I wadna have cared sae muckle. Siccan a like beast! Siccan a fright to be seen!!! I’faith I think shame to tak’ it hame again!! Ay, man, ye’re a pretty fellow! Ye’ve run fast when the noses were dealing; ye’re a bonny man to hack off a poor dumb animal’s tail. If it had been a Christian like yoursell, it wad have mattered less—but a puir bit dumb, harmless animal!”
“Aff wi’ ye there, and nane o’ your chatter,” thundered