ntacles of
prophecy, that a battle of Waterloo would ever be fought, to make the
confounded fugies draw in their horns, and steek up their scraighing gabs
for ever. Poor fushionless creatures!

I do not pretend to be a politician,--having been bred to the tailoring
line syne ever I was a callant, and not seeing the Adverteezer
Newspapers, or the Edinburgh Evening Courant, save and except at an orra
time,--so I shall say no more, nor pretend to be one of the
thousand-and-one wise men, able and willing to direct his Majesty's
Ministers on all matters of importance regarding Church or State. One
thing, however, I trust I ken, and that is, my duty to my King as his
loyal subject, to old Scotland as her unworthy son, and to my family as
their prop, support, and breadwinner;--so I shall stick to all three
(under Heaven) as long as I have a drop of blood in my precious veins.
But the truth is--and I will let it out and shame the de'il--that I could
not help making these general observations (as Maister Wiggie calls the
spiritualeezing of his discourses), as what I have to relate might well
make my principles suspected, were they not known to all the world to be
as firm as the foundations of the Bass Rock. Ye shall nevertheless judge
for yourselves.

It was sometime in the blasty month of March, the weather being rawish
and rainy, with sharp frosty nights that left all the window-soles
whitewashed over with frost rind in the mornings, that as I was going out
in the dark, before lying down in my bed, to give a look into the
hen-house, and lock the coal-cellar, so that I might hang the bit key on
the nail behind our room window-shutter, I happened to give a keek in,
and, lo and behold! the awful apparition of a man with a yellow jacket,
lying sound asleep on a great lump of parrot-coal in a corner!

In the first hurry of my terror and surprise, at seeing a man with a
yellow jacket and a green foraging-cap in such a situation, I was like to
drop the good twopenny candle, and faint clean away; but, coming to
myself in a jiffie, I determined, in case it might be a highway robber,
to thraw about the key, and, running up for the firelock, shoot him
through the head instantly, if found necessary. In turning round the
key, the lock, being in want of a feather of oil, made a noise, and
wakened the poor wretch, who, jumping to the soles of his feet in
despair, cried out in a voice that was like to break my heart, though I
could not