d to the misery of the matter, I found we were
entangling ourselves to work to a wheen ugly customers, skemps that had
not wherewithal to pay lawful debts, and downright rascal-raggamuffins,
and ne'er-do-weels. According to the articles of indenture drawn up
between me and Tommy Staytape, by Rory Sneckdrawer the penny-writer, when
he was bound a prentice to me for seven years, I had engaged myself to
bring him up to be a man of business. Though now a journeyman, I
reckoned the obligation still binding; so, tying up two dockets of
accounts with a piece of twine, I gave one parcel to Tommy, and the other
to Benjie, telling them by way of encouragement, that I would give them a
penny the pound for what silver they could bring me in by hook or crook.

[Picture: An old Dalkeith body]

After three days' toil and trouble, wherein they mostly wore their shoon
off their feet, going first up one close and syne down another, up
trap-stairs to garrets and ben long trances that led into dirty
holes--what think ye did they collect? Not one bodle--not one coin of
copper! This one was out of work;--and that one had his house-rent to
pay;--and a third one had an income in his nose;--and a fourth was
bedridden with rheumatics;--and a fifth one's mother's auntie's cousin
was dead;--and a sixth one's good-brother's nevoy was going to be married
come Martymas;--and a seventh one was away to the back of beyond to see
his granny in the Hielands;--and so on. It was a terrible business, but
what wool can ye get by clipping swine?

The only rational answers I got were two; one of them, Geggie Trotter, a
natural simpleton, told Tommy Staytape, "that, for part-payment, he would
give me a prime leg of mutton, as he had killed his sow last week."--And
what, said I to Benjie, did Jacob Truff the gravedigger tell ye by way of
news? "He just bad me tell ye, faither, that hoo could ye expect he
cou'd gie ye onything till the times grew better; as he hadna buried a
living soul in the kirkyard for mair nor a fortnight."

CHAPTER TWENTY-SIX--ANENT BENJIE IN HIS THIRTEENTH YEAR

It is a most wonderful thing to the eye of a philosopher, to make
observation how youth gets up, notwithstanding all the dunts and tumbles
of infancy--to say nothing of the spaining-brash and the teeth-cutting;
and to behold the visible changes that the course of a few years
produces. Keep us all! it seemed but yesterday to me, when Benjie, a w