; and
we hear now the yell of an old woman in black bonnet and red cloak, who
shook her staff at us like a witch, with the blood running down the
furrows of her face, and, with many oaths, maintained that she was
murdered. The "Lang Gun" had certainly a strong vomit--and, with slugs
or swan-shot, was dangerous at two hundred yards to any living thing.
Bob Howie at that distance arrested the career of a mad dog--a single
slug having been sent through the eye into the brain. We wonder if one
or both of those companions of our boyhood be yet alive--or, like many
other great guns that have since made more noise in the world, fallen a
silent prey to the rust of oblivion.

Not a boy in the school had a game certificate--or, as it was called in
the parish--"a leeshance." Nor, for a year or two, was such a permit
necessary; as we confined ourselves almost exclusively to sparrows. Not
that we had any personal animosity to the sparrow individually--on the
contrary, we loved him, and had a tame one--a fellow of infinite
fancy--with comb and wattles of crimson cloth like a gamecock. But their
numbers, without number numberless, seemed to justify the humanest of
boys in killing any quantity of sprauchs. Why, they would sometimes
settle on the clipped half-thorn and half-beech hedge of the Manse
garden in myriads, midge-like; and then out any two of us, whose day it
happened to be, used to sally with Muckle-mou'd Meg and the Lang Gun,
charged two hands and a finger; and, with a loud shout, startling them
from their roost like the sudden casting of a swarm of bees, we let
drive into the whirr--a shower of feathers was instantly seen swimming
in the air, and flower-bed and onion-bed covered with scores of the
mortally wounded old cocks with black heads, old hens with brown, and
the pride of the eaves laid low before their first crop of pease! Never
was there such a parish for sparrows. You had but to fling a stone into
any stack-yard, and up rose a sprauch-shower. The thatch of every
cottage was drilled by them like honey-combs. House-spouts were of no
use in rainy weather--for they were all choked up by sprauch-nests. At
each particular barn-door, when the farmers were at work, you might have
thought you saw the entire sparrow population of the parish. Seldom a
Sabbath, during pairing, building, breeding, nursing, and training
season, could you hear a single syllable of the sermon for their sakes,
all a-huddle and a-chirp in the belfr