ning away with
beef-steaks, mutton-chops, sheep feet, or something else out of the
booth; and some of his prentice laddies may have come across its
hind-quarters accidentally with the cleaver."

"Mistake here, or mistake there," said the woman, her face growing as red
as the sleeve of a soldier's jacket, and her two eyes burning like live
coals--"'Od the butcher, but I'll butcher him, the nasty, ugly,
ill-faured vagabond; the thief-like, cruel, malicious, ill-hearted,
down-looking blackguard! He would go for to offer for to presume for to
dare to lay hands on an honest man's son's doug! It sets him weel, the
bloodthirsty Gehazi, the halinshaker ne'er-do-weel! I'll gie him sic a
redding up as he never had since the day his mother boor him!" Then
looting down to the poor bit beast, that was bleeding like a sheep--"Ay,
Puggie, man," she said in a doleful voice, "they've made ye an unco
fright; but I'll gie them up their fit for't; I'll show them, in a couple
of hurries, that they have catched a Tartar!"--and with that out went the
woman, paper-parcel, leather-cap and all, randying like a tinkler from
Yetholm; the wee wretchie cowering behind her, with the mouse-wabs
sticking on the place I had put them to stop the bleeding; and looking,
by all the world, like a sight I once saw, when I was a boy, on a visit
to my father's half-cousin, Aunt Heatherwig, on the Castle-hill of
Edinburgh--to wit, a thief going down Leith Walk, on his road to be
shipped for transportation to Botany Bay, after having been pelted for a
couple of hours with rotten eggs in the pillory.

Knowing the nature of the parties concerned, and that intimately on both
sides, I jealoused directly that there would be a stramash; so not
liking, for sundry reasons, to have my nebseen in the business, I shut to
the door, and drew the long bolt; while I hastened ben to the room, and,
softly pulling up a jink of the window clapped the side of my head to it;
that, unobserved, I might have an opportunity of overhearing the
conversation between Reuben Cursecowl and the coallier wife; which,
weel-a-wat, was likely to become public property.

"Hollo! you man, de ye ken onything about that?" cried the randy
woman;--but wait a moment, till I give a skiff of description of our
neighbour Reuben.

By this time--it was ten years after James Batter's tragedy--Mr Cursecowl
was an oldish man--he is gathered to his fathers now--and was
considerably past his best, as his wi