all, even Absalom, the very callant Benjie, my only bairn, had the
impudence to contradict me more than once, and began to think himself as
clever as his father. Save us all! it was a terrible business, but I
determined, come what would, to give it the finishing stitch.

Every night being worse than another, I did not wait long for an
opportunity of letting the whole of them ken my mind, and that, whenever
I chose, I could make them wheel to the right about. So it chanced, as
we were playing, that I was in prime luck, first rooking the one and syne
the other, and I saw them twisting and screwing their mouths about as if
they were chewing bitter aloes. Finding that they were on the point of
being beaten roop and stoop, they all three rose up from the chairs,
crying with one voice, that I was a cheat.--An elder of Maister Wiggie's
kirk to be called a cheat! Most awful!!! Flesh and blood could not
stand it, more especially when I thought on who had dared to presume to
call me such; so, in a whirlwind of fury, I swept up two nievefuls of
dominoes off the table, and made them flee into the bleezing fire; where,
after fizzing and cracking like a wheen squeebs, the whole tot, except
about half-a-dozen which fell into the porritch-pot, which was on boiling
at the time, were reduced to a heap of grey aizles. I soon showed them
who was the top of the tree, and what they were likely to make of
undutiful rebellion.

So much for a Mounseer's legacy; being in a kind of doubt whether,
according to the Riot Act and the Articles of War, I had a clear
conscience in letting him away, I could not expect that any favour
granted at his hands was likely to prosper. In fighting, it is well kent
to themselves and all the world, that they have no earthly chance with
us; so they are reduced to the necessity of doing what they can, by
coming to our firesides in sheep's clothing, and throwing ram-pushion
among the family broth. They had better take care that they do not get
their fingers scadded.

Having given the dominoes their due, and washed my hands free of gambling
I trust for evermore, I turned myself to a better business, which was the
going, leaf by leaf, back through our bit day-book, where I found a
tremendous sowd of wee outstanding debts. I daresay, not to tell a lee,
there were fifty of them, from a shilling to eighteenpence, and so on;
but small and small, reckoned up by simple addition, amount to a round
sum; while, to ad