The coffin having been ordered to be got ready with all haste, two men brought it on their shoulders betimes on the following morning; and it was a sight that made my blood run cold to see the dead corpse of poor Mungo, my own prentice, hoisted up from the bed, and laid in his black-handled, narrow housie. All had taken their last looks, the lid was screwed down by means of screw-drivers, and I read the plate, which said, “Mungo Glen, aged 15.” Alas! early was he cut off from among the living—a flower snapped in its spring blossom—and an awful warning to us all, sinful and heedless mortals, of the uncertainty of this state of being.
In the course of the forenoon, Maister Glen’s cart was brought to the door, drawn by two black horses with long tails and hairy feet, a tram one and a leader. Though the job shook my nerves, I could not refuse to give them a hand down the stair with the coffin, which had a fief-like smell of death and sawdust; and we got it fairly landed in the cart, among clean straw. I saw the clodhapper of a ploughman aye dighting his een with the sleeve of his big-coat.
The mother, Mistress Glen, a little fattish woman, and as fine a homely body as ye ever met with, but sorely distracted at this time by sorrow, sat at the head, with her bonnet drawn over her face, and her shawl thrown across her shoulders, being a blue and red spot on a white ground. It was a dismal-like-looking thing to see her sitting there, with the dead body of her son at her feet; and, at the side of it, his kist with his claes, on the top of which was tied—not being room for it in the inside like, (for he had twelve shirts, and three pair of trowsers, and a Sunday and everyday’s coat, with stockings and other things)—his old white beaver hat, turned up behind, which he used to wear when he was with me. His Sunday’s hat I did not see;
but most likely it was in among his claes, to keep it from the rain, and preserved, no doubt, for the use of some of his little brothers, please God, when they grew up a wee bigger.
Seeing Maister Glen, who had cut his chin in shaving, in a worn-out disjasket state, mounted on his sheltie, I shook hands with them both; and, in my thoughtlessness, wished them “a good journey,”—knowing well what a sorrowful home-going it would be to them, and what their bairns would think when they saw what was lying in the cart beside their mother. On this the big ploughman, that wore a broad blue bonnet and corduroy cutikins, with a grey big-coat slit up behind in the manner I commonly made for laddies, gave his long whip a crack, and drove off to the eastward.
It would be needless in me to waste precious time in relating how I returned to my own country, especially as I may be thankful that nothing particular happened, excepting the coach-wheels riding over an old dog that was lying sleeping on the middle of the road, and, poor brute, nearly got one of his fore-paws chacked off. The day was sharp and frosty, and all the passengers took a loup off at a yill-house, with a Highland-man on the sign of it, to get a dram, to gar them bear up against the cold; yet knowing what had but so lately happened, and having the fears of Maister Wiggie before my eyes, I had made a solemn vow within myself, not to taste liquor for six months at least; nor would I here break my word, tho’ much made a fool of by an Englisher, and a fou Eirisher, who sang all the road; contenting myself, in the best way I could, with a tumbler of strong beer and two butter-bakes.
It is an old proverb, and a true one, that there is no rest to the wicked; so when I got home, I found business crying out for me loudly, having been twice wanted to take the measure for suits of clothes. Of course, knowing that my two customers would be wearying, I immediately cut my stick to their houses, and promised without fail to have my work done against the next Sabbath. Whether from my hurry, or my grief for poor Mungo, or maybe from both, I found on the Saturday night, when the clothes were sent home on the arm of Tammie Bodkin, whom I was obliged to hire by way of foresman, that some awful
mistake had occurred—the dress of the one having been made for the back of the other, the one being long and tall, the other thick and short; so that Maister Peter Pole’s cuffs did not reach above half-way down his arms, and the tails ended at the small of the back, rendering him a perfect fright; while Maister Watty Firkin’s new coat hung on him like a dreadnought, the sleeves coming over the nebs of his fingers, and the hainch buttons hanging down between his heels, making him resemble a mouse below a firlot. With some persuasion, however, there being but small difference in the value of the cloths, the one being a west of England bottle-green, and the other a Manchester blue, I caused them to niffer, and hushed up the business, which, had they been obstreperous, would have made half the parish of Dalkeith stand on end.
After poor Mungo had been beneath the mools, I daresay a good month, Benjie, as he was one forenoon diverting himself dozing his top in the room where they sleeped, happened to drive it in below the bed, where, scrambling in on his hands and feet, he found a half sheet of paper written over in Mungo’s hand-writing, the which he brought to me; and, on looking over it, I found it jingled in metre like the Psalms of David.
Having no skeel in these matters, I sent up the close for James Batter, who, being a member of the fifteenpence a-quarter subscription book-club, had read a power of all sorts of things, sacred and profane. James, as he was humming it over with his specs on his beak, gave now and then a thump on his thigh, “Prime, prime, man; fine, prime, good, capital!” and so on, which astonished me much, kenning who had written it—a callant that had sleeped with our Benjie, and could not have shaped a pair of leggins though we had offered him the crown of the three kingdoms.