“Put these feathers into that bag,” said I; “every feather, and I’ll wait till I see the last put in.”
“Ye’ll find that a kittle job, Mr M‘Levy. A fleeing feather’s no easily catched.”
“Weel,” said Sandy, as he threw a wrathful glance at the mistress of his affection, now about to be lost to him, a loss of fifteen stones of solid beef—“I’ll do your bidding,” and then relaxing into a chuckle—“but will you tell me hoo the devil ony judge or jury can tell, after a’ these feathers are mixed, which belongs to a duke, and which to a hen, and which to ae duke, and no to anither, and which to ae hen, and no to its neeghbour; and then after a’ that, to whom the hens or the dukes belang? Ye see there’s no a head feather left.”
I saw in a moment that the cunning rogue had caught me, and that I might be in for an official scrape. But I had gone too far to recede, and I had got out of as great a difficulty before. “Put in the feathers quick,” said I.
“The lasses will help him,” cried the landlady, still bent on favouring the apprehension of Sandy; and quickly a husky voice sounded through the house, reaching, as it was intended, the hall of the sleeping beauties—“Kate Semple, Jessie Lumsdaine, Flora Macdonald.”
And straightway came rushing from their beds two or three of her “children,” as she used to call them. I need not describe the condition they were in, nor their swollen, sleepless eyes, their dishevelled hair, and their wondering looks, as they found their dreams probably changed from a place where there was roasting to a place of plucking.
“Help Sandy to put thae feathers in that pillow-slip, for the deil ane o’ them will remain to tak’ away the credit o’ my house.”
And thereupon the girls began the work, sprawling on their hands and knees, and putting in handful by handful as Sandy held open the mouth of the slip. The job was a difficult one, and the scene sufficiently picturesque to occupy my attention, diverted as it sometimes was by my anticipated difficulty in identifying the corpses; nor was it without a brush that they could accomplish the entire clearance I insisted on. Even the flying feathers I urged my nymphs to secure, an operation which they undertook with agility, screaming and laughing in the midst of their work with all that wild levity and recklessness for which their tribe is remarkable.
“Here,” cried Mrs Dewar, “there’s some on my bed.” And commencing to pick them up, “Nae man shall say that a stown feather was left in my house.”
A degree of refinement in this honest woman’s purity which produced a smile from me, in spite of the difficulties of a case of evidence which promised me some trouble. Nor were my fears unreasonable. Our honour is at stake in such matters, and then we require to keep in view that while little good may result from punishing so determined and hardened a rogue as Sandy Dewar, the evil consequences of an acquittal are serious. It emboldens the culprit himself, and affords a triumph to the whole fraternity.