ve a thud like thunder, driving
the cork over poor Benjie's head, while it squirted there-up in his eyes
like a fire-engine, and I had only just time to throw down the jug, and
up with the bottle to my mouth. Luckily, for the sixpence it cost, there
was a drop left, which tasted, by all the world, just like brisk dish-
washings; but for all that, it had a wonderful power of setting me to
rights; and my noddle in a while began to clear up, like a March-day
after a heavy shower.

I mind very well too, on the afternoon of the dividual same day, that my
door-neighbour, Thomas Burlings, popped in; and, in our two-handed crack
over the counter, after asking me in a dry, curious way, if I had come by
no skaith in the business of the play, he said, the thing had now spread
far and wide, and was making a great noise in the world. I thought the
body a wee sharp in his observes; so I pretended to take it quite
lightly, proceeding in my shaping-out a pair of buckskin breeches, which
I was making for one of the Duke's huntsmen; so seeing he was off the
scent, he said in a more jocose way--

"Well, speaking about buckskins, I'll tell ye a good story about that."

"Let us hear't," said I; for I was in that sort of queerish way, that I
did not care much about being very busy.

"Ye'se get it as I heard it," quo' Thomas; "and it's no less worth
telling, that it bears a good moral application in its tail; after the
same fashion that a blister does good by sucking away the vicious humours
of the body, thereby making the very pain it gives precious." And
here--though maybe it was just my thought--the body stroked his chin, and
gave me a kind of half gley, as much as saying, "take that to ye,
neighbour." But I deserved it all, and could not take it ill off his
hand; being, like myself, one of the elders of our kirk, and an honest
enough, precise-speaking man.

"Ye see, ye ken," said Thomas, "that the Breadalbane Fencibles, a wheen
Highland birkies, were put into camp at Fisherrow links, maybe for the
benefit of their douking, on account of the fiddle {120}--or maybe in
case the French should land at the water-mouth--or maybe to give the
regiment the benefit of the sea air--or maybe to make their bare houghs
hardier, for it was the winter time, frost and snaw being as plenty as ye
like, and no sae scarce as pantaloons among the core--or for some ither
reason, guid, bad, or indifferent, which disna muckle matter; but ye see
the lang a