windling folks at fairs by the game of the garter. Indeed, it was
stupid of me not to recognise their faces at first sight, having observed
both of them loitering about our back bounds the afternoon before; and
one of them, the tall one with the red head and fustian jacket, having
been in my shop in the fore part of the night, about the gloaming like,
asking me as a favour for a yard or two of spare runds, or selvages.

I have aye heard that seeing is believing; and that youth might take a
warning from the punishment that sooner or later is ever tacked to the
tail of crime, I took Benjie and Mungo to hear the trial; and two more
rueful faces than they put on, when they looked at the culprits, were
never seen since Adam was a boy. It was far different with the two
Eirishers, who showed themselves so hardened by a long course of sin and
misery, that, instead of abasing themselves in the face of a magistrate,
they scarcely almost gave a civil answer to a single question which was
speered at them. Howsoever, they paid for that at a heavy ransom, as ye
shall hear by and by.

Having been kept all night in the cold tolbooth on bread and water,
without either coal or candle to warm their toes, or let them see what
they were doing, they were harled out amid an immense crowd of young and
old, more especially wives and weans, at eleven o'clock on the next
forenoon, to the endurance of a punishment which ought to have afflicted
them almost as muckle as that of death itself.

When the key of the jail door was thrawn, and the two loons brought out,
there was a bumming of wonder, and maybe sorrow, among the terrible
crowd, to see fellow-creatures so left alone to themselves as to have
robbed an honest man's hen-house at the dead hour of night, when a fire
was bleezing next door, and the howl of desolation soughing over the town
like a visible judgment. One of them, as I said before, had a red pow,
and a foraging cap, with a black napkin roppined round his weasand; a
jean jacket with six pockets, and square tails; a velveteen waistcoat
with plated buttons; corduroy breeches buttoned at the knees; rig-and-fur
stockings; and heavy, clanking wooden clogs. The other, who was little
and round-shouldered, with a bull neck and bushy black whiskers, just
like a shoebrush stuck to each cheek of his head, as if he had been a
travelling agent for Macassar, had on a low-crowned, plated beaver hat,
with the end of a peacock's feather, stuck i