have a game at the pallall; and, in the interim,
Donald Bogie, the tinkler from Yetholm, came and left his little jackass
in the byre, while he was selling about his crockery of cups and saucers,
and brown plates, on the old one, through the town, in two creels.

In the middle of auntie Bell's game, she heard an unco noise in the byre;
and, knowing that she had neglected her charge, she ran round the gable,
and opened the door in a great hurry; when, seeing the beastie, she
pulled it to again, and fleeing, half out of breath, into the kitchen
cried,--"Come away, come away, mother, as fast as ye can. Eh, lyst, the
cow's cauffed,--and it's a cuddie!"

CHAPTER TWO--MY OWN FATHER

My own father, that is to say, auld Mansie Wauch with regard to myself,
but young Mansie with reference to my granfather after having run the
errands, and done his best to grannie during his early years, was, at the
age of thirteen, as I have heard him tell, bound a prentice to the weaver
trade which from that day and date, for better for worse, he, prosecuted
to the hour of his death:--I should rather have said to within a
fortnight of it, for he lay for that time in the mortal fever, that cut
through the thread of his existence. Alas! as Job says, "How time flies
like a weaver's shuttle!"

He was a tall, thin, lowering man, blackaviced, and something in the
physog like myself, though scarcely so weel-faured; with a kind of
blueness about his chin, as if his beard grew of that colour--which I
scarcely think it would do--but might arise either from the dust of the
blue cloth, constantly flying about the shop, taking a rest there, or
from his having a custom of giving it a rub now and then with his finger
and thumb, both of which were dyed of that colour, as well as his apron,
from rubbing against, and handling the webs of checkit claith in the
loom.

Ill would it become me, I trust a dutiful son, to say that my father was
any thing but a decent, industrious, hard-working man, doing everything
for the good of his family, and winning the respect of all that knew the
value of his worth. As to his decency, few--very few indeed--laid
beneath the mools of Dalkeith kirkyard, made their beds there, leaving a
better name behind them; and as to industry, it is but little to say that
he toiled the very flesh off his bones, driving the shuttle from Monday
morning till Saturday night, from the rising up of the sun, even to the
going down thereo