"I wasna sure, but I thought I heard it yestreen!"
"I aince thought that I heard it a wee too!"
"How does it play when it is gaun to rise?"
"It begins a scart, scarting, like a rattan, making holes, I fancy, to come out and take us away."
"Aih! then it has just been it that I heard!"
"Oh! I'se warrant it was, and that I heard too!"
"Ay; O it's terrible! we're ill, ill set here! but I'll watch a' night, and keep it aff you, Kelly."
With that I came and sat down on the side of her bed, to keep the invidious scratching bogle away from her; but I soon became drowsy, and was like to fall down. She begged me to lay down my head on her pillow, but I would not hear of that. Oh! no, no, I durst not lie down there; so I stretched me on the loft at her bed-side, and fell asleep. Awakening before day, the first thing I heard was the bogle scratching. Kell had stretched her arm below the bed, on the side opposite to me, and was scratching slowly and fearfully; then, pretending to awake, she hid herself among the bed-clothes, muttered prayers, and cried, "Heigh-ho!" I groaned; and, stretching my hand round the corner, scratched on the other side, even more solemnly, and at more awful intervals than she had affected; so that we lay in great tribulation till the dawning of the day.
Afraid that I had still been too slightly obliging, and that I run the risk of being separated from her, I studied the whole day on the most becoming way of conducting myself, and entered on several most amorous resolutions; but the higher my resolves were, the more pusillanimous was my behaviour when put to the test. I durst not even touch the side of her bed that night; but the wicked unsonsy bogle still continued its scratchings, sometimes on the one side of the bed, and sometimes on the other, I was therefore obliged once more to sit down on her bed side, to guard her from its inroads. In sitting there I dropt asleep, and my head fell down on her pillow—it was impossible I could help that; and then she kindly laid the uppermost coverlet over me for fear of my catching cold; but I was by far too sound asleep to perceive it. She had to pull the covering from below me, in order that she might lay it above me,—for all that I did not awake, which was a great pity, but always as she made the greatest stir, I sniffed the louder. A while after, I turned myself about, and gave my head a ketch toward the back of the bed, till my cheek came in contact with something soft; but it was in my sleep,—and I was in one so so profound, that I could not possibly know what that thing was. What a fright I got next morning on perceiving my situation! I sprung from the bed, and ran away to the hills to my charge, without speaking a word.