ng a lamb, he found he had catched a tartar; so,
calming down as fast as ye like, he said, "Hooly and fairly, Mansie," (or
Maister Wauch, I believe, he did me the honour to call me,) "they'll
maybe no be sae hard as they threaten. But ye ken, my friend, I'm
speaking to ye as a brither; it was an unco-like business for an elder,
not only to gang till a play, which is ane of the deevil's rendevouses,
but to gang there in a state of liquor: making yoursell a world's
wonder--and you an elder of our kirk!! I put the question to yourself
soberly."

His threatening I could despise, and could have fought, cuffed, and
kicked with all the ministers and elders of the General Assembly, to say
nothing of the Relief Synod and the Burgher Union, before I would have
demeaned myself to yield to what my inward spirit plainly told me to be
rank cruelty and injustice; but ah! his calm, brotherly, flattering way I
could not thole with, and the tears came rapping into my eyes, faster
than it cared my manhood to let be seen; so I said till him, "Weel, weel,
Thomas, I ken I have done wrong; and I am sorry for't: they'll never find
me in siccan a scrape again."

Thomas Burlings then came forward in a friendly way, and shook hands with
me; telling that he would go back and plead before them in my behalf. He
said this over again, as we parted, at my shop-door; and, to do him
justice, surely he had not been worse than his word, for I have aye
attended the kirk as usual, standing, when it came to my rotation, at the
plate, and nobody, gentle or semple, ever spoke to me on the subject of
the playhouse, or minted the matter of the Rebuke from that day to this.

CHAPTER XIX.--THE AWFUL NIGHT.

Ha!--'twas but a dream;
But then so terrible, it shakes my soul!
Cold drops of sweat hang on my trembling flesh;
My blood grows chilly, and I freeze with horror.

_Richard the Third_.

The Fire-king one day rather amorous felt;
He mounted his hot copper filly;
His breeches and boots were of tin, and the belt
Was made of cast-iron, for fear it should melt
With the heat of the copper colt's belly.

Oh! then there was glitter and fire in each eye,
For two living coals were the symbols;
His teeth were calcined, and his tongue was so dry,
It rattled against them as though you should try
To play the piano on thimbles.

_Rejected Addresses_.

In the course of a fortnight from the ti