“Somebody’s blawn an ill sough in your lug, friend,” said the dominie, as he caught M‘Harrigle gently by the sleeve, and invited him to sit down.
“Aff haun’s,” cried M‘Harrigle, rudely repelling the dominie’s invitation,—“aff haun’s, I say; no man shall handle me like a brute beast. I ken what’s right as weel’s ony man, and I’ll allow no man to straik me wi’ the hair, to wyse me his ain gate, and syne row my tail to gar me rin by my ain byre door. I want no favours of ony man, but I’ll hae my ain, if there’s law and justice in the land.”
M‘Harrigle proceeded at great length to insist upon his right of restitution, bespattering his slaughter-house observations with abominable oaths, like dirty shreds of dunghill rags sewed on a beggar’s doublet; while the dominie sat musing, swinging backward and forward in his chair, making mental and sometimes audible quotations from the liquid Latin, and, at other times, reciting Greek professorially, ore rotundo. At length, awakening from his learned reverie, and looking over his shoulder to M‘Harrigle, he said, in a tone most provokingly cool and indifferent,—
“Were ye cursing, M‘Harrigle? Ye shouldna curse, ye sinfu’ body; for an ill life maks an ill hinder-end, and Sawtan’s but a rough nurse to spread the sheets and draw the curtains o’ ane’s death-bed.”
The enraged cattle-dealer, finding all further threats and remonstrances unavailing, sat down in sullen and silent indignation, and, with his arms folded across his breast, his eyebrows knit, and his upper teeth firmly compressed against his nether lip, he scowled upon the supposed author of his wrongs, with an expression of face unutterably horrible. He had just sat down when Grierson the messenger brought in a tall, yellow, raw-boned thing of a boy, about fourteen years of age. He had been seized in Sir Robert’s poultry-yard, and although he had nothing in his possession to convict him as a criminal, his manner was so embarrassed, and his appearance altogether so suspicious, that the servants laid hold on him, and committed him to the charge of the officer above mentioned, to be carried before a Justice of the Peace and interrogated. He was accordingly conveyed to M‘Gowan’s, where the officer expected to find Christopher Ramsay of Wrendykeside, who, he was informed, had just alighted at the inn from his gig. He had gone, however, and the officer was about to depart with his charge, when the dominie called him back, and looking pleasantly at the boy, exclaimed, “Ah, Geordie, are ye there, ye wild loon?” The boy started at the voice of his old preceptor, whom he had not before observed. He indeed had heard and believed that his venerable instructor had been torn to pieces by the fury of the mad animal, whose destruction had roused M‘Harrigle’s wrath to such a pitch of frenzy. He gazed upon the dominie with open mouth, and with a pair of large round eyes, much dilated beyond their usual circumference by an overpowering feeling of astonishment; grew pale, and trembled so fearfully that his gruff guardian was compelled by humanity to let him have a seat beside his old master, who rose for his accommodation. The afflicted youth made an effort to speak, but in vain. He stretched out his two hands, grasped that of his master which was extended towards him, looked up in his face, and sobbed as if his heart would burst. The tears ran in floods down his cheeks, and he at length cried out in a choked undertone of bitter agony,—
“Maister, will ye forgie me? Will ye forgie me? Will they hang me for’t?”
“Blessings on’s man, Geordie,” cried the dominie, “what’s wrang wi’ ye?”
“Oh!” cried the afflicted boy, “my father, and mother, and brothers, and as sisters, and a’ will get a sair heart for me yet. Oh!” and he continued to cry distractedly.
“The deil tak the laddie,” said M‘Harrigle, “it maks a man’s heart as saft as ill-fed veal to look at him. What’s come ower ye, ye blubbering stirk?”
Mr Singleheart spoke not a word to him, but continued clapping him on the shoulder, while M‘Glashan, every now and then, cried out, “Hout, laddie, you’ll be makin’ a fool o’ us a’ noo,” and so saying, he drew the back of his brawny fist across his eyes several times, began to finger his bagpipe in silence, as if he would soothe his sympathy by the imagination of playing some merry spring, but his fingers, after two or three rapid dumb-show flourishes, stood as stationary upon the holes as if the piper and his instrument of sound had been both chiselled out of the same stone. The boy still vented his grief as clamorously and bitterly as ever, clung to his master with the agony of a conscience-stricken penitent, and cried,—