of the
Goose and the Pair of Shears rampant.

Leaving Tammie to take care of his own matters, as he is well able to do,
allow me to observe, that it is curious how habit becomes a second
nature, and how the breaking in upon the ways we have been long and long
accustomed to, through the days of the years that are past, is as the
cutting asunder of the joints and marrow. This I found bitterly, even
though I had the prospect before me of spending my old age in peace and
plenty. I could not think of leaving my auld house--every room, every
nook in it was familiar to my heart. The garden trees seemed to wave
their branches sorrowfully over my head, as bidding me a farewell; and
when I saw all the scraighing hens catched out of the hen-house I had
twenty years before built and tiled with my own hands, and tumbled into a
sack, to be carried on limping Jock Dalgleish's back up to our new abode
at Lugton, my heart swelled to my mouth, and the mist of gushing tears
bedimmed my eyesight. Four of Thomas Burlings' flour carts stood laden
before the door with our furniture, on the top of which were three of
Nanse's grand geraniums in flower-pots, with five of my walking-sticks
tied together with a string; and as I paced through the empty rooms,
where I had passed so many pleasant and happy hours, the sound of my feet
on the bare floor seemed in my ears like an echo from the grave. On our
road to Lugton I could scarcely muster common sense to answer a person
who wished us a good-day; and Nanse, as we daundered on arm-in-arm, never
once took her napkin from her een. Oh, but it was a weary business!

Being in this sober frame of mind, allow me to wind up this chapter--the
last catastrophe of my eventful life that I mean at present to make
public--with a few serious reflections; as it fears me, that, in much of
what I have set down, ill-natured people may see a good deal scarcely
consistent with my character for douceness and circumspection; but if
many wonderfuls have befallen to my share, it would be well to remember
that a man's lot is not of his own making. Musing within myself on the
chances and changes of time, the uncertainties of life, the frail thread
by which we are tacked to this world, and how the place that now knows us
shall soon know us no more, I could not help, for two or three days
previous to my quitting my dear old house and shop, taking my stick into
my hand, and wandering about all my old haunts and houffs--