on the King's highway in
broad daylight; and having robbed him of his hat, wig, and neckcloth, an
upper and under vest, a coat and great-coat, a pair of Hessian boots
which he had on his legs, a silver watch with four brass seals and a key,
besides a snuff-box made of boxwood, with an invisible hinge, one of the
Lawrencekirk breed, a pair of specs, some odd halfpennies, and a
Camperdown pocket-napkin.

But of all months of the year--or maybe, indeed, of my blessed
lifetime--this one was the most adventurous. It seemed, indeed, as if
some especial curse of Providence hung over the canny town of Dalkeith;
and that, like the great cities of the plain, we were at long and last to
be burnt up from the face of the earth with a shower of fire and
brimstone.

Just three days after the drumming of the two Eirish ne'er-do-weels, a
deaf and dumb woman came in prophesying at our back door, offering to
spae fortunes. She was tall and thin, an unco witch-looking creature,
with a runkled brow, sunburnt haffits, and two sharp piercing eyes, like
a hawk's, whose glance went through ye like the cut and thrust of a
two-edged sword. On her head she had a tawdry brownish black bonnet,
that had not improved from two three years' tholing of sun and wind; a
thin rag of a grey duffle mantle was thrown over her shoulders, below
which was a checked shortgown of gingham stripe, and a green glazed manco
petticoat. Her shoon were terrible bauchles, and her grey worsted
stockings, to hide the holes in them, were all dragooned down about her
heels. On the whole, she was rather, I must confess, an out-of-the-way
creature; and though I had not muckle faith in these bodies that pretend
to see further through a millstone than their neighbours, I somehow or
other, taking pity on her miserable condition, being still a
fellow-creature, though plain in the lugs, had not the heart to huff her
out; more by token, as Nanse, Benjie, and the new prentice Mungo, had by
this time got round me, all dying to know what grand fortunes waited them
in the years of their after pilgrimage. Sinful creatures that we are!
not content with the insight into its ways that Providence affords us,
but diving beyond our deeps, only to flounder into the whirlpools of
error. Is it not clear, that had it been for our good, all things would
have been revealed to us; and is it not as clear, that not a wink of
sound sleep would we ever have got, had all the ills that have crossed