both directly saw that something was wrong. Both saw, in short, what was, indeed, too true, that the horse had fairly run away with them; for he was now going like the wind, with fury and distraction in his looks. It was a shocking and most dreadfully alarming affair; and so Johnny and his friend felt it to be, as might be distinctly seen by their horror-stricken faces.
On discovering the predicament they were in, both the travellers—the one dropping his whip, and the other his stick—seized on the reins, and began pulling with all their might, in the desperate hope of checking the animal's speed by main force; Johnny, in his terror, exclaiming the while, distractedly—
"Mair o't yet, mair o't yet! Lord have a care o' me, but this is awfu'! This is waur than onything I hae met wi' yet. Waur than the Fifteen Sisters, Dutchmen, and a'. God be wi' us! are my misfortunes never to hae an end, till they hae finished me outricht? Am I never to get safe to either ae place or anither?—either to hame or to Brechin? Surely ane o' them might be permitted to me. O, Jamie, see hoo he's gaun! He doesna seem to fin' us at his hurdies, nae mair than if we war a pair o' preencushions."
This was true enough. The horse in his fury did not indeed seem to feel either them or the vehicle they were seated in, but pushed madly onwards, till he came to where the road divided itself into two distinct roads—the one being the right one, and the other, of course, the wrong—when, as if inspired by Johnny's evil genius, he at once took the latter, and in little more than twenty minutes, had him and his friend fully half as many miles out of their way. Now, however, the catastrophe was to be wound up. A milestone caught one of the wheels of the gig, canted it over, and threw Johnny sprawling on the road with a broken leg; his friend, although also thrown, escaping wholly unhurt.
"Aweel, here it's at last," said Johnny, sitting up in the mud amongst which he had been planted, and fully believing that his injuries were fatal. "Here it's at last. I'm clean dune for noo, after a' my escapes. It may be noo plainly seen, I think," he went on, "that some evil spirit has had me in its power, for these six weeks past at ony rate, and has been gowfin' me about the world like a fitba', to kill me wi' a gig at last."
Luckily, Johnny's injuries did not prove so serious as he had feared they would do; and no less fortunate was it that the accident to which they were owing happened not far from a small country town in which there was a resident surgeon. To the latter place Johnny was immediately removed on a temporary bier, hastily constructed for the purpose by some labouring men who chanced to be near the spot where the accident happened, and there he lay for six entire weeks, when the surgeon above alluded to, and who had attended him all that time, intimated to him that he might now venture to return home. Delighted with the intelligence, Johnny instantly acted on it, and next day entered Carlisle triumphantly in a post-chaise—not looking, nor really being, after all, much the worse for his unprecedented adventures, save and except a lameness in the injured limb, which ever after imparted to his movements the graceful up-and-down motion produced by that peculiar longitudinal proportion of the nether limbs, designated by the descriptive definition of "a short leg and a shorter." Having, with this last occurrence, concluded the story of Johnny's disasters, we have only to add that Johnny has never, to this good hour, got the length of Brechin—nor will, he says, ever again make the attempt.