writing down, "Your name is Nancy"--and turning to me, as she made
some dumbie signs, she chalked down, "Your name is Mansie Wauch, that
saved the precious life of an old bedridden woman from the fire; and will
soon get a lottery ticket of twenty thousand pounds."

Knowing the truth of the rest of what she had said, I could not help
jumping on the floor with joy, and seeing that she was up to everything,
as plain as if it had happened in her presence. The good news set us all
a skipping like young lambs, my wife and the laddies clapping their hands
as if they had found a fiddle; so, jealousing they might lose their
discretion in their mirth, I turned round to the three, holding up my
hand, and saying, "In the name o' Gudeness, dinna mention this to ony
leeving sowl; as, mind ye, I havena taken out the ticket yet. The doing
so might not only set them to the sinful envying of our good fortune, as
forbidden in the tenth commandment, but might lead away ourselves to be
gutting our fish before we get them."

"Mind then," said Nanse, "about your promise to me, concerning the silk
gown, and the pair--"

"Wheesht, wheesht, gudewifie," answered I. "There's a braw time coming.
We must not be in ower great a hurry."

I then bade the woman sit down by the ingle cheek, and our wife to give
her a piece of cold beef, and a shave of bread, besides twopence out of
my own pocket. Some, on hearing siccan sums mentioned, would have
immediately struck work, but, even in the height of my grand
expectations, I did not forget the old saying, that "a bird in the hand
is worth two in the bush"; and being thrang with a pair of leggins for
Eben Bowsie, I brushed away ben to the workshop, thinking the woman, or
witch, or whatever she was, would have more freedom and pleasure in
eating by herself.--That she had, I am now bound to say by experience.

[Picture: James Batter]

Two days after, when we were sitting at our comfortable four-hours, in
came little Benjie, running out of breath--just at the dividual moment of
time my wife and me were jeering one another, about how we would behave
when we came to be grand ladies and gentlemen, keeping a flunkie
maybe--to tell us, that when he was playing at the bools, on the
plainstones before the old kirk, he had seen the deaf and dumb spaewife
harled away to the tolbooth, for stealing a pair of trowsers that were
hanging drying on a tow in Juden Elshinder's back close. I co