“Dinna ye ken—sauf us! what a fearsome night this is! The trees will be all broken. What a noise in the lum! I daresay there’s some auld hag of a witch-wife gaun to come rumble doun’t. It’s no the first time, I’ll swear. Hae ye a silver sixpence? Wad ye like that?” he bawled up the chimney. “Ye’ll hae heard,” said he, “lang ago, that a wee murdered wean was buried—didna ye hear a voice?—was buried
below that corner—the hearth-stane there, where the laddie’s lying on?”
I had now lost my breath, so that I could not stop him.
“Ye never heard tell o’t, didna ye? Weel, I’se tell’t ye—Sauf us, what swurls of smoke coming doun the chimley—I could swear something no canny’s stopping up the lum head—Gang out, and see!”
At that moment a clap like thunder was heard—the candle was driven over—the sleeping laddie roared “Help!” and “Murder!” and “Thieves!” and, as the furm on which we were sitting played flee backwards, cripple Isaac bellowed out, “I’m dead!—I’m killed—shot through the head!—Oh! oh! oh!”
Surely I had fainted away; for, when I came to myself, I found my red comforter loosed; my face all wet—Isaac rubbing down his waistcoat with his sleeve—the laddie swigging ale out of a bicker—and the brisk brown stout, which, by casting its cork, had caused all the alarm, whizz—whizz—whizzing in the chimley lug.
CHAPTER ELEVEN—TAFFY WITH THE PIGTAIL: SCHOOL RECOLLECTIONS
It was a clear starry night, in the blasty month of January, I mind it well. The snow had fallen during the afternoon; or, as Benjie came in crying, that “the auld wives o’ the norlan sky were plucking their geese”; and it continued dim and dowie till towards the gloaming, when, as the road-side labourers were dandering home from their work, some with pickaxes and others with shools, and just as our cocks and hens were going into their beds, poor things, the lift cleared up to a sharp freeze, and the well-ordered stars came forth glowing over the blue sky. Between six and seven the moon rose; and I could not get my two prentices in from the door, where they were bickering one another with snow-balls, or maybe carhailling the folk on the street in their idle wantonness; so I was obliged for that night to disappoint Edie Macfarlane of the pair of black spatterdashes he was so anxious to get finished, for dancing in next day, at Souple Jack the carpenter’s grand penny-wedding.
Seeing that little more good was to be expected till morning, I came to the resolution of shutting-in half-an-hour earlier than usual; so, as I was carrying out the shop-shutters, with my hat over my cowl, for it was desperately sharp, I mostly in my hurry knocked down an old man, that was coming up to ask me, “if I was Maister Wauch the tailor and furnisher.”
Having told him that I was myself, instead of a better; and having asked him to step in, that I might have a glimpse of his face at the candle, I saw that he was a stranger, dressed in a droll auld-farrant green livery-coat, faced with white. His waistcoat was cut in the Parly-voo fashion, with long lappels, and a double row of buttons down the breast; and round his neck he had a black corded stock, such like, but not so broad, as I afterwards wore in the volunteers, when drilling under Big Sam. He had a well-worn scraper on his head, peaked before and behind, with a bit crape knotted round it, which he politely took off, making a low bow; and requesting me to bargain with him for a few articles of grand second-hand apparel, which once belonged to his master that was deceased, and which was now carried by himself, in a bundle under his left oxter.