e all growing sea-sick, and pale as stucco images.

Frightened out of his wits at last that he would be the death of the
whole council, and that more of them would poison themselves, he took up
one of the segars--every one knows segars now, for they are fashionable
among the very sweeps--which he lighted at the candle, and commenced
puffing like a tobacco-pipe.

My uncle and the rest, if they were ill before, were worse now; so when
they got to the open air, instead of growing better, they grew sicker and
sicker, till they were waggling from side to side like ships in a storm;
and, not knowing whether their heels or heads were uppermost, went
spinning round about like pieries.

"A little spark may make muckle wark." It is perfectly wonderful what
great events spring out of trifles, or what seem to common eyes but
trifles. I do not allude to the nine days' deadly sickness, that was the
legacy of every one that ate his segar, but to the awful truth, that, at
the next election of councillors, my poor uncle Jamie was completely
blackballed--a general spite having been taken to him in the town-hall,
on account of having led the magistracy wrong, by doing what he ought to
have let alone, thereby making himself and the rest a topic of amusement
to the world at large, for many and many a month.

Others, to be sure, it becomes me to make mention, have another version
of the story, and impute the cause of his having been turned out to the
implacable wrath of old Bailie Bogie, whose best black coat, square in
the tails, that he had worn only on the Sundays for nine years, was
totally spoiled, on their way home in the dark from his lordship's, by a
tremendous blash, that my unfortunate uncle happened, in the course of
nature, to let flee in the frenzy of a deadly upthrowing.

CHAPTER THREE--THE COMING INTO THE WORLD OF MANSIE WAUCH

I have no distinct recollection of the thing myself, yet there is every
reason to believe that I was born on the 15th of October 1765, in that
little house standing by itself, not many yards from the eastmost side of
the Flesh-market Gate, Dalkeith. My eyes opened on the light about two
o'clock in a dark and rainy morning. Long was it spoken about that
something great and mysterious would happen on that dreary night; as the
cat, after washing her face, went mewing about, with her tail sweeing
behind her like a ramrod; and a corbie, from the Duke's woods, tumbled
down Jamie Elder's lum,