In the first hurry of my terror and surprise, at seeing a man with a yellow jacket and a green foraging-cap in such a situation, I was like to drop the good twopenny candle, and faint clean away; but, coming to myself in a jiffie, I determined, in case it might be a highway robber, to thraw about the key, and, running up for the firelock, shoot him through the head instantly, if found necessary. In turning round the key, the lock, being in want of a feather of oil, made a noise, and wakened the poor wretch, who, jumping to the soles of his feet in despair, cried out in a voice that was like to break my heart, though I could not make out one word of his paraphernally. It minded me, by all the world, of a wheen cats fuffing and fighting
through ither, and whiles something that sounded like “Sugar, sugar, measure the cord,” and “dabble dabble.” It was worse than the most outrageous Gaelic ever spoken in the height of passion by a Hieland shearer.
“Oho!” thinks I, “friend, ye cannot be a Christian from your lingo, that’s one thing poz; and I would wager tippence you’re a Frenchy. Who kens, keep us all, but ye may be Buonaparte himself in disguise, come over in a flat-bottomed boat to spy the nakedness of the land. So ye may just rest content, and keep your quarters good till the morn’s morning.”
It was a wonderful business, and enough to happen to a man in the course of his lifetime, to find Mounseer from Paris in his coal-neuk, and have the enemy of his country snug under lock and key; so, while he kept rampauging, fuffing, stamping, and diabbling away, I went in and brought out Benjie, with a blanket rowed round him, and my journeyman, Tommy Staytape—who, being an orphan, I made a kind of parlour-boarder of, he sleeping on a shake-down beyond the kitchen-fire—to hold a consultation, and be witness of the transaction.
I got my musket, and Tommy Staytape armed himself with the goose—a deadly weapon, whoever may get a clour with it—and Benjie took the poker in one hand, and the tongs in the other; and out we all marched briskly, to make the Frenchman, that
was locked up from the light of day in the coal-house, surrender. After hearkening at the door for a while, and finding all quiet, we gave a knock to rouse him up, and see if we could bring any thing out of him by speering cross-questions. Tommy and Benjie trembled from top to toe, like aspen leaves, but fient a word could we make common sense of at all. I wonder who educates these foreign creatures? it was in vain to follow him, for he just gab-gabbled away, like one of the stone masons at the Tower of Babel. At first I was completely bamboozled, and almost dung stupid, though I kent one word of French which I wanted to put to him, so I cried through, “Canna you speak Scotcha, Mounseer?”
He had not the politeness to stop and make answer, but just went on with his string of haivers, without either rhyme or reason, which we could make neither top, tail, nor main of.
It was a sore trial to us all, putting us to our wit’s end, and how to come on was past all visible comprehension; when Tommy Staytape, giving his elbow a rub, said, “Od, maister, I wager something that he’s broken loose frae Penicuik. We have him like a rotten in a fa’.”
On Penicuik being mentioned, we heard the foreign creature in the coal-house groaning out, “och,” and “ochone,” and “parbleu,” and “Mysie Rabble,”—that I fancy was his sweetheart at home, some bit French
quean, that wondered he was never like to come from the wars and marry her. I thought on this, for his voice was mournful, though I could not understand the words; and kenning he was a stranger in a far land, my bowels yearned within me with compassion towards him.