Except the fact of the stolen goods being found in their possession, it so chanced, ye observe, that we had no other sort of evidence whatsoever; but we took care to examine them one at a time, the one not hearing what the other said; so, by dint of cross-questioning by one who well knew how to bring fire out of flint, we soon made the guilty convict themselves, and brought the transaction home to two wauf-looking fellows that we had got smoking in a corner. From the speerings that were put to them during their examination, it was found that they tried to make a way of doing by swindling folks at fairs by the game of the garter. Indeed, it was stupid of me not to recognise their faces at first sight, having observed both of them loitering about our back bounds the afternoon before; and one of them, the tall one with the red head and fustian jacket, having been in my shop in the fore part of the night, about the gloaming like, asking me as a favour for a yard or two of spare runds, or selvages.
I have aye heard that seeing is believing; and that youth might take a warning from the punishment that sooner or later is ever tacked to the tail of crime, I took Benjie and Mungo to hear the trial; and two more rueful faces than they put on, when they looked at the culprits, were never seen since Adam was a boy. It was far different with the two Eirishers, who showed themselves so hardened by a long course of sin and misery, that, instead of abasing themselves in the face of a magistrate, they scarcely almost gave a civil answer to a single question which was speered at them. Howsoever, they paid for that at a heavy ransom, as ye shall hear by and by.
Having been kept all night in the cold tolbooth on bread and water, without either coal or candle to warm their toes, or let them see what they were doing, they were harled out amid an immense crowd of young and old, more especially wives and weans, at eleven o’clock on the next forenoon, to the endurance of a punishment which ought to have afflicted them almost as muckle as that of death itself.
When the key of the jail door was thrawn, and the two loons brought out, there was a bumming of wonder, and maybe sorrow, among the terrible crowd, to see fellow-creatures so left alone to themselves as to have robbed an honest man’s hen-house at the dead hour of night, when a fire was bleezing next door, and the howl of desolation soughing over the town like a visible judgment. One of them, as I said before, had a red pow and a foraging cap, with a black napkin roppined round his weasand; a jean jacket with six pockets, and square tails; a velveteen waistcoat with plated buttons; corduroy breeches buttoned at the knees; rig-and-fur stockings; and heavy, clanking wooden clogs. The other, who was little and round-shouldered, with a bull neck and bushy black whiskers, just like a shoebrush stuck to each cheek of his head, as if he had been a travelling agent for Macassar, had on a low-crowned, plated beaver hat, with the end of a peacock’s feather stuck in the band; a long-tailed old black coat, as brown as a berry, and as bare as my loof, to say nothing of being out at both elbows. His trowsers, I dare say, had once been nankeen; but as they did not appear to have seen the washing-tub for a season or two, it would be
rash to give any decided opinion on that head. In short, they were two awful-like raggamuffins.
Women, however, are aye sympathizing and merciful; so, as I was standing among the crowd, as they came down the tolbooth stair, chained together by the cuffs of the coat, one said, “Wae’s me! what a weel-faur’d fellow, wi’ the red head, to be found guilty of stealing folk’s hen-houses.”—And another one said, “Hech, sirs! what a bonny blackaviced man that little ane is, to be paraded through the strees for a warld’s wonder!” But I said nothing, knowing the thing was just, and a wholesome example; holding Benjie on my shoulder to see the poukit hens tied about their necks like keeking-glasses. But, puh! the fellows did not give one pinch of snuff; so off they set, and in this manner were drummed through the bounds of the parish, a constable walking at each side of them with Lochaber axes, and the town-drummer row-de-dowing the thief’s march at their backs. It was a humbling sight.
My heart was sorrowful, notwithstanding the ills they had done me and mine, by the nefarious pillaging of our hen-house, to see two human creatures, of the same flesh and blood as myself, undergoing the righteous sentence of the law, in a manner so degrading to themselves, and so pitiful to all that beheld them. But, nevertheless, considering what they had done, they neither deserved, nor did they seem to care for commiseration, holding up their brazen faces as if they had been taking a pleasure walk for the benefit of their health, and the poukit hens, that dangled before them, ornaments of their bravery. The whole crowd, young and old, followed them from one end of the town to the other, liking to ding one another over, so anxious were they to get a sight of what was going on; but when they came to the gate-end, they stopped and gave the ne’er-do-weels three cheers. What think you did the ne’er-do-weels do in return? Fie shame! they took off their old scrapers and gave a huzza too; clapping their hands behind them, in a manner as deplorable to relate as it was shocking to behold.
Their chains—the things, ye know, that held their cuffs together—were by this time taken off, along with the poukit hens, which I fancy the town-offishers took home and cooked for
their dinner; so they shook hands with the drummer, wishing him a good-day and a pleasant walk home, brushing away on the road to Edinburgh, where their wives and weans, who had no doubt made a good supper on the spuilzie of the hens, had gone away before, maybe to have something comfortable for their arrival, their walk being likely to give them an appetite.
Had they taken away all the rest of the hens, and only left the bantams, on which they must have found but desperate little eating, and the muffed one, I would have cared less; it being from several circumstances a pet one in the family, having been brought in a blackbird’s cage by the carrier from Lauder, from my wife’s mother, in a present to Benjie on his birth-day. The creature almost grat himself blind, when he heard of our having seen it roasting in a string by the legs before the fire, and found its bonny muffed head in a corner.