at our close mouth. So I determined within
myself, with a strong determination, to behave more sensibly for the
future, and think no more about limekilns and coal-pits; but to trust,
for Benjie's recovery from the chincough, to a kind Providence, together
with Daffy's elixir, and warm blankets.

CHAPTER XVI.--THE BLOODY CARTRIDGE.

So stands the Thracian herdsman with his spear
Full in the gap, and hopes the hunted bear;
And hears him in the rustling wood, and sees
His course at distance by the bending trees;
And thinks--Here comes my mortal enemy,
And either he must fall in fight or I.

DRYDEN'S _Palamon and Arcite_.

Nay, never shake thy gory locks at me;
Thou canst not say I did it!

_Macbeth_.

It was on a fine summer morning, somewhere about four o'clock, when I
wakened from my night's rest, and was about thinking to bestir myself,
that I heard the sound of voices in the kail-yard stretching south from
our back windows. I listened--and I listened--and I better listened--and
still the sound of the argle-bargling became more distinct, now in a
fleeching way, and now in harsh angry tones, as if some quarrelsome
disagreement had taken place. I had not the comfort of my wife's company
in this dilemmy; she being away, three days before, on the top of Tammie
Trundle the carrier's cart, to Lauder, on a visit to her folks there; her
mother (my gudemother like) having been for some time ill with an income
in her leg, which threatened to make a lameter of her in her old age, the
two doctors there--not speaking of the blacksmith, and sundry skeely old
women--being able to make nothing of the business; so nobody happened to
be with me in the room saving wee Benjie, who was lying asleep at the
back of the bed, with his little Kilmarnock on his head, as sound as a
top. Nevertheless, I looked for my clothes; and, opening one half of the
window shutter, I saw four young birkies, well dressed--indeed three of
them customers of my own--all belonging to the town; two of them young
doctors, one of them a writer's clerk, and the other a grocer. The whole
appeared very fierce and fearsome, like turkey-cocks; swaggering about
with warlike arms as if they had been the king's dragoons; and priming a
pair of pistols, which one of the surgeons, a spirity, outspoken lad,
Maister Blister, was holding in his grip.

I jealoused at once what they were after, being now a wee up to
fire-arms; so I