with a sticked
killing-coat, in my own shop; and, in the second place, as a swindler,
imposing on his Majesty's loyal subjects, taking the coin of the realm on
false pretences, and palming off goat's flesh upon Christians, as if they
were perfect Pagans."

Heathen though Cursecowl was, this oration alarmed him in a jiffie, soon
showing him, in a couple of hurries, that it was necessary for him to be
our humble servant: so he said, still keeping the smirk on his face,
"Keh, keh, it's not worth making a noise about after all. Gie me the
jacket, Mansie, my man, and it'll maybe serve my nephew, young Killim,
who is as lingit in the waist as a wasp. Let us take a shake of your paw
over the counter, and be friends. Bye-ganes should be bye-ganes."

Never let it be said that Mansie Wauch, though one of the king's
volunteers, ever thrust aside the olive branch of peace; so, ill-used
though I had been, to say nothing of James Batter, who had got his pipe
smashed to crunches, and one of the eyes of his spectacles knocked out, I
gave him my fist frankly.

James Batter's birse had been so fiercely put up, and no wonder, that it
was not so easily sleeked down; so, for a while he looked unco glum, till
Cursecowl insisted that our meeting should not be a dry one; nor would he
hear a single word on me and James Batter not accepting his treat of a
mutchkin of Kilbagie.

I did not think James would have been so doure and refractory--funking
and flinging like old Jeroboam; but at last, with the persuasion of the
treat, he came to, and, sleeking down his front hair, we all three took a
step down to the far end of the close, at the back street, where Widow
Thamson kept the sign of "The Tankard and the Tappit Hen"; Cursecowl,
when we got ourselves seated, ordering in the spirits with a loud rap on
the table with his knuckles, and a whistle on the landlady through his
fore-teeth, that made the roof ring. A bottle of beer was also brought;
so, after drinking one another's healths round, with a tasting out of the
dram glass, Cursecowl swashed the rest of the raw creature into the
tankard, saying--"Now take your will o't; there's drink fit for a king;
that's real 'Pap-in.'"

He was an awful body, Cursecowl, and had a power of queer stories, which,
weel-a-wat, did no lose in the telling. James Batter beginning to
brighten up, hodged and leuch like a nine-year-old; and I freely confess,
for another, that I was so diverted, that, I dare sa