three weeks and
some odd days before ever a single syllable passed between us.

Gude kens how long this Quaker-meeting-like silence would have continued,
had we not chanced to foregather one gloaming; and I, having gotten a
dram from one of our customers with a hump-back, at the Crosscausey,
whose fashionable new coat I had been out fitting on, found myself as
brave as a Bengal tiger, and said to her, "This is a fine day, I say, my
dear Nancy."

The ice being once broken, every thing went on as smoothly as ye like;
so, in the long run, we went like lightning from twohanded cracks on the
stair-head, to stown walks, after work-hours, out by the West Port, and
thereaway.

If ever a man loved, and loved like mad, it was me, Mansie Wauch--and I
take no shame in the confession; but, knowing it all in the course of
nature, declare it openly and courageously in the face of the wide world.
Let them laugh who like; honest folk, I pity them; such know not the
pleasures of virtuous affection. It is not in corrupted, sinful hearts
that the fire of true love can ever burn clear. Alas, and ohon orie!
they lose the sweetest, completest, dearest, truest pleasure that this
world has in store for its children. They know not the bliss to meet,
that makes the embrace of separation bitter. They never dreamed the
dreams that make wakening to the morning light unpleasant. They never
felt the raptures that can dirl like darts through a man's soul from a
woman's eye. They never tasted the honey that dwells on a woman's lip,
sweeter than yellow marygolds to the bee; or fretted under the fever of
bliss that glows through the frame in pressing the hand of a suddenly
met, and fluttering sweetheart. But tuts-tuts--hech-how! my day has long
since passed: and this is stuff to drop from the lips of an auld fool.
Nevertheless, forgive me, friends: I cannot help all-powerful nature.

[Picture: The minister's lassie Jess]

Nanse's taste being like my own, we amused one another in abusing great
cities, which are all chokeful of the abominations of the Scarlet Woman;
and it is curious how soon I learned to be up to trap--I mean in an
honest way; for, when she said she was wearying the very heart out of her
to be home again to Lauder, which she said was her native, and the true
land of Goshen, I spoke back to her by way of answer--"Nancy, my dear,
believe me that the real land of Goshen is out at Dalkeith; and if ye'll
take up ho