s associates among
the Cheviots, was extensively practised twenty-nine years ago amid the
dingier haunts of the High Street and the Canongate. Our party, like
most others, had its dog--a repulsive-looking brute, with an
earth-directed eye, as if he carried about with him an evil conscience;
and my companions were desirous of getting his earthing ability tested
upon the badger of the establishment; but on summoning the
tavern-keeper, we were told that the party below had got the start of
us: their dog was as we might hear, "just drawing the badger; and
before our dog could be permitted to draw him, the poor brute would
require to get an hour's rest." I need scarce say that the hour was
spent in hard drinking in that stagnant atmosphere; and we then all
descended through the trap-door, by means of a ladder, into a
bare-walled dungeon, dark and damp, and where the pestiferous air smelt
like that of a burial vault. The scene which followed was exceedingly
repulsive and brutal--nearly as much so as some of the scenes furnished
by those otter hunts in which the aristocracy of the country delight
occasionally to indulge. Amid shouts and yells, the badger, with the
blood of his recent conflict still fresh upon him, was again drawn to
the box mouth; and the party returning satisfied to the apartment above,
again betook themselves to hard drinking. In a short time the liquor
began to tell, not first, as might be supposed, on our younger men, who
were mostly tall, vigorous fellows, in the first flush of their full
strength, but on a few of the middle-aged workmen, whose constitutions
seemed undermined by a previous course of dissipation and debauchery.
The conversation became very loud, very involved, and, though highly
seasoned with emphatic oaths, very insipid; and leaving with Cha--who
seemed somewhat uneasy that my eye should be upon their meeting in its
hour of weakness--money enough to clear off my share of the reckoning, I
stole out to the King's Park, and passed an hour to better purpose among
the trap rocks than I could possibly have spent it beside the trap-door.
Of that tavern party, I am not aware that a single individual save the
writer is now living: its very dog did not live out half his days. His
owner was alarmed one morning, shortly after this time, by the
intelligence that a dozen of sheep had been worried during the night on
a neighbouring farm, and that a dog very like his had been seen prowling
about the fold;